[R-gui] Re: [R] The hidden costs of GPL software?

[Duncan Murdoch]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 13:50:59 +0100, "A.J. Rossini"
<blindglobe at gmail.com> wrote:

>Note that there are bits and pieces of IDE components within ESS,
>provided that you use some of the other tools available (in
>particular, ECB).  I've not finished integration, but it provides
>tools comparable to JDEE (the Emacs Java IDE), which isn't far off
>from Eclipse in many ways.

Yes, definitely, and if R itself had more of the infrastructure to
support a full IDE, I imagine you'd expose it in ESS as soon as anyone
did.

>Currently, it does provide limited source code navigation within the
>file, for example to functions and "data assignments".  Next would be
>some of the code generation tools, but that becomes tricky.
>
>Applications programming is NOT statistical programming, and this
>point needs to be hammered in, sometimes.  There is a duality with R
>(and similar interactive (not necessarily interpretive) programming
>languages used for data analysis such as Lisp, Perl, and Python)
>
>An IDE for statistical analysis is different than what one wants from
>a GUI, or from an IDE for applications programming.

I can see the need for differences between IDEs for interactive vs
compiled operation, but what sorts of differences do you think are
specific to statistical programming vs application programming?

By the way, I think we're using "GUI" differently.  For reference,
when I use it I'm distinguishing it from a teletype style command line
interface.  In my usage, vi and Emacs are both GUIs (though vi is a
pretty limited one).  Command line R is not.  Windows Rgui is mixed,
in that the console acts like a teletype (you can only add input at
the bottom), but there are also GUI elements.

Duncan Murdoch