[R-gui] R GUI considerations (was: R, Wine, and multi-threadedness)

I think it is a little premature to entirely discount
Gtk2, especially if it is based on Philippe's remark
below.  Philippe, did you try other applications,
different themes, different configurations, or just the vanilla GIMP?
and when? While I don't necessarily disagree with the claim that it is
different from Windows look and feel, it requires a little bit more
evidence.

My main concern has been stability of gtk/gtk2 under Windows.  I've used 
it off and on for several years, and it has always been flaky -- sometimes 
it works on one computer but crashes on another, for example.

Personally, I have not seen any GTK2-based application that I find better 
than acceptable as a GUI, whereas I have seen some Qt-based ones I really 
liked.  But I realize this is a matter of individual taste (as it seems 
are Tk widgets - someone must like them!).

However, as an educator I see a lot of resistance to learning new tricks 
without good reason.  If the point of adding a GUI to R is to avoid people 
learning to use a command-line, it needs to be a GUI with which they are 
comfortable.  (I presume that is part of the reason why applications 
flocked to MS-Office style GUIs a few years ago.)  People (such as me) who 
are not comfortable with such styles are not in a good position to judge 
their needs.

[...]

Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at 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