[R-gui] [Rd] R GUI considerations (was: R, Wine, and multi-threadedness)

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005, Duncan Temple Lang wrote:

> I think it is a little premature to entirely discount
> Gtk2, especially if it is based on Philippe's remark
> below.  Philippe, did you try other applications,
> different themes, different configurations, or just the vanilla GIMP?
> and when? While I don't necessarily disagree with the claim that it is
> different from Windows look and feel, it requires a little bit more
> evidence.

My main concern has been stability of gtk/gtk2 under Windows.  I've used 
it off and on for several years, and it has always been flaky -- sometimes 
it works on one computer but crashes on another, for example.

Personally, I have not seen any GTK2-based application that I find better 
than acceptable as a GUI, whereas I have seen some Qt-based ones I really 
liked.  But I realize this is a matter of individual taste (as it seems 
are Tk widgets - someone must like them!).

However, as an educator I see a lot of resistance to learning new tricks 
without good reason.  If the point of adding a GUI to R is to avoid people 
learning to use a command-line, it needs to be a GUI with which they are 
comfortable.  (I presume that is part of the reason why applications 
flocked to MS-Office style GUIs a few years ago.)  People (such as me) who 
are not comfortable with such styles are not in a good position to judge 
their needs.

[...]

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595