[R-gui] Mixing GUI packages
Dan Putler
dan.putler at sauder.ubc.ca
Wed Nov 23 09:01:42 CET 2011
Hi Christiaan,
This is (as you probably expect) an "it depends" question for at least
two reasons. One thing that complicates everything is the underlying
widget toolkit that is being used. The goal of gWidgets is to be
agnostic with respect to the underlying GUI toolkit, but seems to have
the most functionality under GTK2 (via the RGTK package), while both
fgui and rpanel use Tcl/Tk (via the tcltk package). gWidgets will work
with Tcl/Tk and the tcltk package, but you may want to make sure you can
get the functionality you want from gWidgets when using Tcl/Tk. Mixing
GTK2 and Tcl/Tk in even a loosely coupled setup seems like asking for
trouble (and the installation process for novice Mac users could be
really trying). The second question is how tightly integrated do you
want all the various dialogs you create to be? If they are very loose,
you may well be OK using a number of different high level R GUI
"frameworks". However, I can see where maintenance of the system you
develop could be a real headache, particularly if you want the
components to be tightly integrated. The upshot, if you can base
everything on using the R tcltk package as the foundation, then what you
are proposing is probably do-able, but by mixing and matching higher
level R GUI frameworks you may be trading-off short-term implementation
gains for long-term maintenance headaches. Personally, in this situation
I would stick with the higher level GUI framework that is the most
flexible, even it it is not the easiest for creating "quick and dirty"
user dialog boxes.
Dan
On 11/22/2011 11:31 PM, christiaan pauw wrote:
> Hi Everybody
>
> I have to make a gui for a collection of my functions in order to make it
> easier for my colleagues (who are very code-shy and function strictly in a
> point and click environment).
>
> I have trawled the web for documentation and have come to the preliminary
> conclusion that I am going to use the gWidgets package for this task but
> fgui and rpanel seems to make some aspects easy to implement.
>
> Is it feasible to use gWidgets, fgui as well as rpanel in one
> implementation or should one stick to one of these and do everything with
> the one gui package?
>
> regards
> Christiaan
>
> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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