[R-sig-teaching] text editor for teaching R

[Philippe Grosjean]

Hello,

You mention you want something simple, thus a lightweight text editor 
with just the "submit to R" function (and perhaps, a little bit of 
syntax highlighting). However, there are many more complex features that 
one would appreciate when teaching R. There are, I think, three software 
that were developed with teaching in mind, specifically: JGR + Deducer 
(already mentioned), R Commander, and SciViews/Komodo Edit 
(http://www.sciviews.org/SciViews-K). I can speak a little bit about the 
later one.

- It runs the same way on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux,

- Of course, you have code submission + syntax highlighting (much richer 
syntax highlighting than many other lightweight solutions, including 
indication in red of wrong number formatting, or wrong escaped sequence 
in strings), plus:

- A complete object explorer where you can drill in complex objects to 
discover their content. Objects explorers are very important because 
they help "visualize" what's in memory... often a difficult task for 
students in sections where abstraction level is lower (psychology, 
social sciences, biology, versus math, stat or physic, to cite just a few).

- A R reference toolbox that provides easy point&click access to pieces 
of R code through a more familiar paradigm of dialog box (more familiar, 
again, to some categories of students). This is important, I think, and 
is also covered by both R commander and Deducer menus. However, in 
SciViews/Komodo, new items are created easily by selecting a piece of R 
code, right clicking, and choosing ("create snippet") in the contextual 
menu (well, for creating the dialog box, you have to tag parts of that R 
code with something looking like [[%ask:X:default value]], but really 
much, much simpler than programming a plugin in R Commander and 
Decducer. Example: a code for creating a dialog box asking for two 
variables and a color and plotting a scatterplot would look like:

plot([[%ask:x:<x>]] [[%ask:y:<y>]], col = [[%ask:col:1]])

Select that code, right-click, "create snippet",... and you got a dialog 
box prompting for x, y, and col.

- Many other nice features, like completion lists, function calltips, 
contextual help and contextual search R help (place the cursor anywhere 
on a word, and hit Shift-F1, or Ctrl-Shift-F1, and the corresponding R 
help pops up), etc...

According to my experience in teaching to biologists, or biomed 
students, those features are really much more than gadgets to help them 
mastering R and statistical methods.

Final word: I admit that a simpler installer and complete documentation 
of all these features are still lacking for SciViews... but it is 
planned (no sorry, no date yet).

Best,

Philippe Grosjean
..............................................<°}))><........
  ) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( (    Prof. Philippe Grosjean
  ) ) ) ) )
( ( ( ( (    Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems
  ) ) ) ) )   Mons University, Belgium
( ( ( ( (
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Stuart Wagenius wrote:
> Oh yes. Very nice. Thank you for your help!
> 
> Stuart
> 
> On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 3:22 PM, G. Jay Kerns <gkerns at ysu.edu> wrote:
>> Dear Stuart,
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 4:10 PM, Greg Snow <Greg.Snow at imail.org> wrote:
>>> In windows, the simplest editor to use is the built in one in the R gui.  Just click on file, then New Script and it will open a blank editor (or use open script to read in a file).  This is a pretty basic editor, it does not do syntax highlighting, paren matching an several other things that are nice in Tinn-R, ESS/emacs and others.
>>>
>>> But one really nice thing is that you can highlight a section of code and just click a single button on the toolbar and the highlighted code will be copied to the command line and run.  Or without a selection, the same button will run the current line and advance to the next line (so clicking the button several times runs the next several lines of code).
>>>
>>> And you don't have to install anything besides R.
>>>
>>> Hope this helps,
>>>
>>
>> I had to delete most of my reply because Greg Snow said it better than me.  :-)
>>
>> I have also used Emacs/ESS for upper-division students; you didn't
>> mention the level of your classes.  If your students are introductory
>> and have grown up clicking buttons then it will be painful for them.
>> But Emacs/ESS is very stable, easy to install and setup via Vincent
>> Goulet,  has syntax highlighting, automatic spacing, code completion,
>> can handle R transcripts... the list goes on and on...
>>
>> I would not recommend Emacs/ESS for freshmen who have mice for right
>> hands, but anything over the introductory level has been fine for me
>> (or even introductory if your students are sharp).
>>
>> Good luck,
>> Jay
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ***************************************************
>> G. Jay Kerns, Ph.D.
>> Associate Professor
>> Department of Mathematics & Statistics
>> Youngstown State University
>> Youngstown, OH 44555-0002 USA
>> Office: 1035 Cushwa Hall
>> Phone: (330) 941-3310 Office (voice mail)
>> -3302 Department
>> -3170 FAX
>> VoIP: gjkerns at ekiga.net
>> E-mail: gkerns at ysu.edu
>> http://people.ysu.edu/~gkerns/
>>
> 
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