[R-gui] R GUI question from new member

[Philippe Grosjean]

Hi Luca,

I would suggest to work/enhance existing code rather that reinventing 
the wheel. There are a couple of RGui projects, and you may found what 
you are looking for in there. Look, at http://www.sciviews.org/_rgui/ 
for a listing of various projects. You have GUIs written in Java, 
Tcl/Tk, GTK, etc... there. Tcl/Tk is often used for convenience, because 
the tcltk R package is available with (almost) all R distributions. So, 
you don't need to install additional stuff. That is what makes Rcmdr so 
easy to run on all platforms. If you want more advanced features, I 
agree that there are better solutions (GTK, wxWidgets, etc).

May I suggest you to look here: 
http://bioinf.wehi.edu.au/folders/james/wxPython/. This is a solution 
using R and Python... in development and desperately seeking for a new 
maintainer. This is not GTK, but wxWidgets, which is also a very good 
solution. Regarding a substitute for Glade, you could consider Boa 
Constructor. Look here: http://bioinf.wehi.edu.au/folders/james/RBoa/. 
The explanation on this page is a little outdated. The latest version of 
Boa Constructor is now compatible with wxPython 2.5.X. So, you don't 
need to install Python/wxPython twice as explained in the page. Anyway, 
using RSPython, you should be able to do what you want (mixing R, Python 
and GTK).

Best,

Philippe Grosjean

Luca Manini wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> I'm new to this list (and to the whole R world); I've started to read
> some threads in the archives to get acquinted with the community but I
> have some questions ready to be asked "now".  So please keep with me
> even if the mail is not that short.
> 
> 
> I'm a software developer and I've been asked to "write a GUI for R".
> The customer(s) are (could be in the near future) some departments of
> the local university where R is used both for teaching and research
> (in various areas).  So the problem is always the same: users find CLI
> difficult to learn/use and/or the time to learn them is greater than
> the total available time (for introductory courses in statistics, for
> example).
> 
> As I said, I don't know much of R but it clear that is a big
> language/environment and that just thinking (let alone writing) a
> "full GUI" for it is a major undertaking well beyond the time (and
> money) budget I have at hand.
> 
> So, what I have in mind is, instead of using/customizing big GUIs, to
> just write some small apps with a dedicated and minimal GUI for any
> single and simple task (think for example of some students'
> "exercises" on regression, or a series of computations or analysis or
> drawing steps needed to complete a research paper).  
> 
> Of course I will not directly write them myself (sorry to say that)
> but instead I have to check whether that approach is feasible and, if
> it is, to "set up" the environment (docs, tools, examples, ...) so
> that "junior programmers" (or smart users) can write the single apps
> in a reasonable time.
> 
> I'm thinking about Python + GTK + Glade for the interface stuff with
> some "glue" to get Python speak to R (and trap the answers).  Python
> is my preferred language, it is easy to learn (and I'm happy to teach
> it) and Glade is easy to use.
> 
> My biggest concern at the moment is to check that I'm not offering to
> write something to solve an already solved problem and **for that**
> I'm asking this list's help.
> 
>         TIA for any help/suggestion, Luca
> 
> PS: the second biggest is to check that my idea is feasible/reasonable
>     (and for that I've already started experimenting).
>