How graphical an interface should the default be?

Very nice additions you have made! Thanks.
-----Original Message-----
From: r-devel-bounces@stat.math.ethz.ch 
[mailto:r-devel-bounces@stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Prof 
Brian Ripley
Sent: Friday, February 25, 2005 12:11 PM
To: R-devel@r-project.org
Subject: [Rd] How graphical an interface should the default be?

install/update.packages will have a lot of changes in 2.1.0, 
and I have 
been adding some widgets to go along with this.

- Rather than just CRAN and BIOC, you have a character vector of
   repositories.  There is a function setRepositories() to set the
   appropriate option().

- There is no default CRAN, but a function chooseCRANmirror() to set a
   mirror, which is invoked if you try to access CRAN without 
setting a
   mirror.

- update.packages(ask="graphics") brings up a listbox for you 
to de-select packages (all available updates are pre-selected).
Minor comment 1: Isn't ask=(TRUE|FALSE) and graphics=(TRUE|FALSE) more in
line with the other updates? True, one more argument, but you can imagine
update.packages(ask=TRUE) with a "fall-back" to a text-based selection menu.
Until implemented, one could default to graphics=ask.

Minor comment 2: Naming conventions, not discussed very often, but I would
suggest chooseCranMirror() instead of chooseCRANmirror(). (I comment on this
in under "3.1 General Naming Conventions" -> "Abbreviations and acronyms
should not be uppercase when used as name" in my RCC draft at
http://www.maths.lth.se/help/R/RCC/.)
- install.packages() with no/empty pkgs argument brings up a 
listbox of all available packages (including those inside bundles).

- menu(graphics=TRUE) is implemented.

These can be set up to use widgets where available (Windows, if Tk is 
available under X11, I hope Aqua before release), and have a 
text-mode 
fallback (better than the current menu(), but in that 
spirit). (Except 
that is install.packages: text-mode selection from 480 
packages even in 
three columns is not useful to me, but a scrolling list works well as 
Windows users of R already know.)

My question is:

 	What should be default be?

Options might be:

- use the graphics widget if available.

- make the graphics the default on Windows (it will always be 
available,
   but not necessarily on the right screen under DCOM uses).

- make text-mode the default on Unix.
I would say that same/identical behaviour on as many platforms as possible
should be favored. That will make it easier to write general
instructions/help and have subsection with OS-specific features.
- do different things for different tools.  Currently 
setRepositories()
   and chooseCRANmirror() default to graphics-if-possible, and
   update.packages() defaults to text mode (which gives more
   detailed information).

I am not really in favour of making the defaults a set of 
options, but that is possible.
My feeling is that a global option is what you want. Not only in the above
cases, it would be nice for any package developer to be able to query such
an option. I also believe there are different users; some prefer GUIs some
prefer command line, or even strongly dislike GUIs).

If writing scripts for, say, automated installation of 450+ CRAN packages on
various systems such Linux, Windows and OS X, it would be very useful to
have a predictive behaviour of the above so that you can make it work the
same on all systems. For example, I used to redefine readline() to
automatically answer questions asked by install.packages() when installing
many packages at the same time; this would be much harder if a GUI pops up. 

Maybe there should be a new options to start R with, e.g. --nogui. 

Best

Henrik Bengtsson
This is a request for input on what would be a good 
compromise for general R users (and not just the R-devel audience).

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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How graphical an interface should the default be?

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