GTK+ has many more features than tcl/tk (tile included), though tcl/tk does
have some features that GTK+ lacks, like a canvas widget.

The API of the underlying toolkits, as well as the R interfaces, are quite
different. I've heard many people say that they prefer the GTK+/RGtk2 style,
though there are probably many people that feel the opposite. The tcltk
package is a binding to the Tcl language, while RGtk2 is a binding to a
collection of C libraries.

RGtk2 also binds libglade, meaning that one can design a GUI graphically
using the Glade tool and display it using R. Glade may or may not be useful,
depending on the application. The Rattle tool seems to have used Glade
effectively, but I personally prefer to construct the interfaces
dynamically.

Since GTK+ is object-oriented, RGtk2 is able to support the creation of new
widget classes that override the functionality of their parents. This is a
neat feature, but is rarely necessary.

For graphics, RGtk2 binds several useful libraries, including Cairo (vector
graphics) and GdkPixbuf (image manipulation).

You might also consider the gWidgets package. It is a convenient API for
creating simple GUIs in R. It abstracts away the underlying toolkit.
Implementations exist using RGtk2 and rJava (swing). You could always start
using a GUI this way and then convert to RGtk2 or some other toolkit later
if necessary.

I hope this helps,
Michael

On 7/28/07, morphwj@comcast.net <morphwj@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Why use R tcltk/tcltk2 instead of R GTk2, or why use R GTk2 instead of R
> tcltk/tcltk2?
> Bill Morphet
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> R-SIG-GUI mailing list
> R-SIG-GUI@stat.math.ethz.ch
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-gui
>

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

