[R-SIG-Mac] questions and suggestions for R gui

[Denis Chabot]

Hi,

I really like the new R mac gui, but I am not sure yet if it behaves 
unexpectedly at times or if it is just my limited knowledge of R. In 
particular I did not look very much for what has changed between R 1.9 
and R 2, so I may do stupid things.

It seems to me that in the previous R on Mac (1.9), all menu selections 
resulted in feedback in the console. It does not seem to be the case 
anymore. This is confusing because getting feedback some of the time 
leaves you wondering if things are OK the rest of the time. For 
instance, in package manager, if I select mgcv, I get "This is mgcv 
1.1-8" in the console. But if I take MASS, nothing happens in the 
console.

In preferences, I don't seen a way to permanently set my working 
directory anymore. Choosing it with "change working directory" and 
saving my working directory when quitting R does not set the working 
directory permanently either.

In preferences for the quartz device, the "change" button to select a 
font does nothing.

Also, while acknowledging the immense amount of work that the authors 
of R gui have done, I would like to make a suggestion so that R gui 
would be yet more mac like. In things like Package Manager, we click on 
packages we'd like to load, but there is no button to select an action 
to be taken on our selection. We have to "close" the window and the 
packages get loaded. It is counterintuitive, in other programs if we 
close a window we cancel the selections we might have made. It would be 
clearer, I think, to have at the bottom a <cancel> and a <load> (or 
just OK) button. Do other users agree?

Denis Chabot