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How graphical an interface should the default be?

4 messages · Brian Ripley, Robert Gentleman, Henrik Bengtsson

Original
Brian Ripley
# 
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).

- 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.

- 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.


This is a request for input on what would be a good compromise for general 
R users (and not just the R-devel audience).
Robert Gentleman
#
On Feb 25, 2005, at 3:11 AM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Hi,
Thanks for taking this on - it looks like a big step forward. I have  
some pretty minor comments/questions. We will, of course, try to adapt  
the BioC code in time...

  We probably want to be sure that any function calling one of these has  
complete control and can override user defined defaults.

  I am not completely clear on your model for how the repositories are  
searched though. Two questions come to mind: 1) How do I get the most  
recent version of a package, regardless of which repository it is in?  
2) Can a package from one repository have its dependencies resolved in  
another repository, or not? (this last one is a real can of worms - in  
my view, as one might really prefer a same repository solution, but  
that means that repositories might need to completely contain CRAN -  
which is clearly less desirable). And of course this may be too fine a  
level of detail, but these problems have come up in our experience.

I think it would be nice if getting dependencies had two (or more  
levels), so that I could get only those packages that the current  
package "Depends" on, and a second level where I could
get both the "Suggests" and the "Depends". For me (at least) Suggests  
is weaker, and for many  users the "Suggests" set of packages is not  
always needed - the "Depends" set, is though. Currently the  
dependencies option seems to only allow TRUE and FALSE.

  Robert

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

        
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      Brian Ripley
    

    

      
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On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Robert Gentleman wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
They have arguments to control this, e.g.

            

      
      
      
    

        
function (graphics = TRUE)

            

      
      
      
    

        
That is the documented default behaviour.  (`Most recent' = `highest 
version number'.)  If more than one repository offers the same version, it 
is taken from the first on the list.

Icens is the only example that I have noticed, where BioC has a later 
version than CRAN.

setRepositories allows users to choose the order only in the text version, 
and you can of course just set the option from the command-line.

            

      
      
      
    

        
Yes, but looking for dependencies is not the default, so you can 
do something like

install.packages("foo", repos="http://www.bioconductor.org",dependencies=TRUE)

to confine the search.

            

      
      
      
    

        
That's true as for 2.0.0, and we could easily refine it (you need Imports 
too).

Brian

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Henrik Bengtsson
    

    

      
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Very nice additions you have made! Thanks.

            

      
      
      
    

        
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/.)

            

      
      
      
    

        
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.

            

      
      
      
    

        
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