[R-sig-ME] Is there any chance of development of multivariate linear mixed models for lme4

[Ian Dworkin]

Hi,

  From what I gather this is a list primarily dedicated to the
development of mixed model libraries for R. So I apologize if this is
not the appropriate place for this.

  I am in the process of making the transition from SAS to R. One of
the major procedures I use(d) in SAS was PROC MIXED, and I am slowly
getting familiar with lmer.

 I was wondering if there is any discussion of working on the
development of multivariate mixed models? Most of the data I am
interested with is multivariate in nature, and univariate methods tend
to be less useful. Not that PROC MIXED does this very effectively, but
you can trick MIXED to do some multivariate models using the repeated
statement and specifying an unstructured covariance matrix etc..
However the code is ugly and not very intuitive.

  Anyways, I am asking in the vain hope that something is being
developed in lme4 for multivariate models.

Thanks

Ian