[R-gui] RGtk2 release details

[Michael Lawrence]

Earlier today I sent an email to r-packages announcing the release of 
RGtk2. I don't think that has propagated to the lists yet, but I would 
like to specially announce it here with more details.

RGtk2 is a binding from R to GTK and many of its underlying libraries, 
plus a few extras. RGtk2 works on all three major platforms (Linux, Mac, 
and Windows). It is based on the original RGtk by Duncan Temple Lang, 
but RGtk2 is largely a rewrite of that package. I approached the RGtk2 
with the goal of providing a virtually complete binding without 
sacrificing the familiar R style of programming.

As its name suggests, RGtk2 binds to the new (well 5 years old now) GTK2 
libraries. GTK2 offers many improvements over its successor including 
more sophisticated widgets, overhauled object-oriented functionality, 
internationalized and anti-aliased font rendering, etc.

Actually, the bindings to GTK are only part of the story. RGtk2 also 
offers complete bindings to Pango (font rendering), GDK (basic drawing, 
low-level device access), Cairo (vector graphics), GdkPixbuf (image 
manipulation), libglade (GUI's from XML descriptions), GtkMozEmbed 
(embeddable mozilla browser on linux), and ATK (accessibility devices).

One of the coolest parts is that these bindings are fully documented by 
the R adaptation of the API docs for the bound libraries. You should 
learn all you need to know directly from within R.

I also provided a GTK implementation of Simon Urbanek's iWidgets API.

Here is the current website (may be moved to Omegahat eventually):
http://www.ggobi.org/rgtk2

Please find more details there. The page also includes a link to my 
Cairo R graphics device that allow you to embed R graphics in RGtk2 GUI's.

Thank you for your interest,
Michael Lawrence