Skip to content

Google Summer of Code 2009

22 messages · Friedrich Leisch, Liviu Andronic, Sklyar, Oleg (London) +8 more

Original
Friedrich Leisch
# 
Hi,

in approximately one months time mentoring institutions can propose
projects for the Google Summer of Code 2009, see

  http://code.google.com/soc/

Last year the R Foundation succesfully participated with 4 projects,
see http://www.r-project.org/SoC08/ for details.  We want to
participate again this year. Our project proposals will be managed by
Manuel Eugster (email address in CC). Manuel is one of my PhD students
and mentored the Roxygen project last year. This mail is mainly
intended to make you aware of the program, Manuel will send a followup
email with more technical details in the next days.

In this phase we are looking for potential mentors who can offer
interesting projects to students.  I don't think that we will get much
more than 4-6 projects, so don't be disappointed if you propose
something and don't get selected.

There are two selection steps involved: (a) The R Foundation has to
compile an official "ideas list" of projects, for which students can
apply. Last year we had 8 of those. After that, we (b) get a certain
number of slots from Google (4 last year) and all prospective project
mentors can vote on which projects actually get funding.

Currently we are looking for good ideas for phase (a). I give no
guarantees that all ideas will get on our official ideas list, what we
pick depends on the number of submissions and topics, respectively. We
want to make sure to have a broad range of themes, it is unlikely,
that we will, e.g., pick 10 database projects. Also keep in mind that
students have only three months time. This is not a research exercise
for the students, you should have a rough idea what needs to be done.

Last year we had a majority of "infrastructure projects", and only few
with focus on statistical algorithms. We got a lot of applications for
the latter, so don't hesitate to formulate projects in that
direction. Important infrastructure may get precedence over
specialized algorithms, though, because the whole community can benfit
from those. But that will be a decision in phase (b), and we are not
there yet.

Please don't send any ideas to me right now, wait for the above
mentioned email by Manuel on the technical details for idea submission.

Best,
Fritz
Sklyar, Oleg (London)
# 
Two ideas:

1) A library for interactive plots in R

R lacks functionality that would allow displaying of interactive plots with two distinct functionalities: zooming and panning. This functionality is extremely important for the analysis of large, high frequency, data sets spanning over large ranges (in time as well). The functionality should acknowledge Axis methods in callbacks on rescale (so that it could be extended to user-specific classes for axis generation) and should have a native C interface to R (i.e. no Java, but such cross platform widgets like GTK or QT or anything similar that does not require heavy-weight add-ons). GTK has been used successfully from within R in many applications (RGtk, rgobby, EBImage etc) on both *nix and Windows, and thus could be a preferential option, it is also extremely easy to integrate into R. The existing tools (e.g. iplots) are slow, unstable and lack support for time/date plots (or actually any non-standard axes) and they are all Java. We are looking into stanard xy-plots as well as image and 3D plots. Obviously one can think of further interactivity, but this would be too much for the Summer of Code project. A good prototype would already be a step forward.

2) Cross platform GUI debugger, preferably further Eclipse integration (beyond StatET capabilities)

Tibco has recently released the S+ workbench for eclipse which has a reasonable support for non-command line debugging. In the R community, the StatET eclipse plugin mimics a lot of code development functionality of S+ workbench, but has poor support for in-line execution of R sessions in eclipse and does not have debugging capabilities. Supporting this project further, or developing a GUI debugger independent of eclipse, are both acceptable options. The debugger should allow breakpoints, variable views etc.

For both of the above, our interest is mostly on the Linux side, but one should look into cross-platform solutions.

Regards,
Oleg

Dr Oleg Sklyar
Research Technologist
AHL / Man Investments Ltd
+44 (0)20 7144 3107
osklyar at maninvestments.com
**********************************************************************
Please consider the environment before printing this email or its attachments.
The contents of this email are for the named addressees ...{{dropped:19}}
Simon Urbanek
#
On Feb 19, 2009, at 6:38 , Sklyar, Oleg (London) wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
If primitive 3d scatterplot interactivity is all you want, go with  
rggobi. It's GTK and has all this already and much more. However,  
ggobi also shows why GTK is not a good choice for general interactive  
graphics toolkit - it [GTK] is slow and lacks reasonable graphics  
support. OpenGL is IMHO a better way to go since IG don't really  
leverage any of the widgets (you get them for free via R widgets  
packages anyway) and OpenGL gives you excellent speed, alpha-support  
and anti-aliasing etc.

As you can imagine I don't agree with most of your statements above  
and I'm happy to discuss them in a separate thread. Just as an aside  
iPlots 3.0 (announced for useR!/DSC) are no longer Java based and have  
a native C interface.

Cheers,
S

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Sklyar, Oleg (London)
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Simon,

I would not like to take it offline as I disagree with your points and think it is fair to let other users know why. To make it clear first, I am most interested in 2D, not 3D plots, and rgobbi is not a good enough solution, unfortunately.

1) I spent loads of time looking for good, if any at all, interactive graphics packages for R. There are hardly many, and apart from rgl there are no good ones as I see it. I do accept that this can be subjective, but I think many people will share my opinion.

2) With respect to iplots:

http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/iplots/index.html states:
Version: 	1.1-3
Depends: 	R (? 1.5.0), methods, rJava (? 0.5-0)

http://www.rosuda.org/iplots/ states:
News:

    * 2007/08/07 Released iplots_1.1-1 on CRAN...

There might be version 3 available somewhere, but it is not obvious where and the above one is Java based. I have tried the above version about 4 months ago -- it was slow, unstable and did not have any support for time axis at all. If I find it, I will give it a try and will be able to post corresponding comments.

2) rggobi is not a solution for 2D graphics at all and this is what is missing in R. I would not mention rgobbi myself having had no look at it first. However, if somebody works on interactive 2D plots, there is no reason why this person should think of 3D as well to have all in one framework.

3) I have a prototype using gtkdatabox for very fast interactive plots in R using GTK, but it is limited by the capabilities of the gtkdatabox widget, not that of R or GTK as such.

I do think there is a need for an interactive graphics package for R.

Dr Oleg Sklyar
Research Technologist
AHL / Man Investments Ltd
+44 (0)20 7144 3107
osklyar at maninvestments.com

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        
**********************************************************************
Please consider the environment before printing this email or its attachments.
The contents of this email are for the named addressees only.  It contains information which may be confidential and privileged.  If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately, destroy this email and any attachments and do not otherwise disclose or use them. Email transmission is not a secure method of communication and Man Investments cannot accept responsibility for the completeness or accuracy of this email or any attachments. Whilst Man Investments makes every effort to keep its network free from viruses, it does not accept responsibility for any computer virus which might be transferred by way of this email or any attachments. This email does not constitute a request, offer, recommendation or solicitation of any kind to buy, subscribe, sell or redeem any investment instruments or to perform other such transactions of any kind. Man Investments reserves the right to monitor, record and retain all electronic communications through its network to ensure the integrity of its systems, for record keeping and regulatory purposes. 
Visit us at: www.maninvestments.com 
TG0908
**********************************************************************

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Liviu Andronic
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 3:47 PM, Sklyar, Oleg (London)

        
<osklyar at maninvestments.com> wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
There are also the GTK-based playwith, and latticist; unsure though
whether they fit your requirements.
Liviu

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Sklyar, Oleg (London)
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Thanks for pointing out. playwith looks quite interesting

Dr Oleg Sklyar
Research Technologist
AHL / Man Investments Ltd
+44 (0)20 7144 3107
osklyar at maninvestments.com

            

      
      
      
    

        
**********************************************************************
Please consider the environment before printing this email or its attachments.
The contents of this email are for the named addressees ...{{dropped:19}}

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Yihui Xie
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Well, for the first idea, isn't it easy enough to fulfill zooming or
panning using getGraphicsEvent() in the grDevices package? For example
(using keys +/-/Left/Right/Up/Down/* to zoom and pan):

##################################################################
# a demo for zooming and panning in R graphics
# by Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com> Feb 20, 2009
##################################################################
# a large number of points
plot(x <- rnorm(5000), y <- rnorm(5000), xlab = "x", ylab = "y")
xylim <- c(range(x), range(y))
zoom <- function(d, speed = 0.05) {
    rx <- speed * (xylim[2] - xylim[1])
    ry <- speed * (xylim[4] - xylim[3])
    # global assignment '<<-' here!
    xylim <<- xylim + d * c(rx, -rx, ry, -ry)
    plot(x, y, xlim = xylim[1:2], ylim = xylim[3:4])
    NULL
}
# Key `+`: zoom in; `-`: zoom out
# Left, Right, Up, Down: self-explaining
# `*`: reset
# Press other keys to quit
keybd <- function(key) {
    switch(key, `+` = zoom(1), `-` = zoom(-1), Left = zoom(c(-1,
        1, 0, 0)), Right = zoom(c(1, -1, 0, 0)), Up = zoom(c(0,
        0, 1, -1)), Down = zoom(c(0, 0, -1, 1)), `*` = plot(x,
        y), "Quit the program")
}
getGraphicsEvent(onKeybd = keybd)
##################################################################

Regards,
Yihui
--
Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com>
Phone: +86-(0)10-82509086 Fax: +86-(0)10-82509086
Mobile: +86-15810805877
Homepage: http://www.yihui.name
School of Statistics, Room 1037, Mingde Main Building,
Renmin University of China, Beijing, 100872, China



On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 7:38 PM, Sklyar, Oleg (London)

        
<osklyar at maninvestments.com> wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Sklyar, Oleg (London)
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Dear Yihui,

I am sure there are many possibilities available, but I am not looking for a hack and rather for a versatile high-quality solution. It solution should be fast, reliable and developed to a high standard. Moreover, on my X11 RHEL5 x86_64 I get the following:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Error in getGraphicsEvent(onKeybd = keybd) : 
  graphics device does not support graphics events

Furthermore, one could think of a library displaying multiple plots, for multivariate data, allowing simultaneous zoom into all of the plots.

Dr Oleg Sklyar
Research Technologist
AHL / Man Investments Ltd
+44 (0)20 7144 3107
osklyar at maninvestments.com

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        
**********************************************************************
Please consider the environment before printing this email or its attachments.
The contents of this email are for the named addressees ...{{dropped:19}}

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Simon Urbanek
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Oleg,

        
On Feb 19, 2009, at 9:47 , Sklyar, Oleg (London) wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
I didn't say offline, I said other thread, since this is not really  
about GSOC so I think this is getting OT ...

            

      
      
      
    

        
Maybe we are talking about entirely different things here - rgl is not  
interactive graphics at all - it is essentially a 3d renderer/viewer,  
not a data analytic tool [although it can be (ab)used as a very  
limited one for very specific tasks] - see literature on interactive  
graphics ...

            

      
      
      
    

        
<free-software-author's rant>
At the very least it is polite to report any such issues (with  
details) to the authors. Comments like "X is bad, slow and crashes"   
are completely useless since they are unsubstantiated claims that  
don't help in creating better software -- neither are they helpful as  
a starting point for creating new software. If you want to be of any  
use to the community you should be more specific as of what you are  
talking about, what are the data examples etc. and talk to the authors.
</free-software-author's rant>
Given your comments I suspect you have very specific ideas of use, but  
we can only know when you tell us. In general, Java graphics are not  
slow, in fact they are often faster than conventional "native"  
implementations and are far more flexible.
[[split off to Java for graphics thread if you wish]]

As for iPlots, the development has shifted a while ago from the 'old'  
iPlots to the new ones which are in development stage (as I said they  
are announced for the useR! conference). My point was not about  
telling you to use a specific software, it was rather about making you  
aware of the fact that what you describe already exists (ggobi  
definitely is IG in GTK) and/or is worked on (iPlots 3.0) with  
possibly better approach.

I do fully support a GSOC proposal for interactive graphics software,  
it's just I think your formulation included some unnecessarily  
restricting details and personal opinions as well as misunderstandings  
as of what interactive graphics are. If we get that right, I think  
it's a great opportunity.
[[only this is really for the GSOC thread]]

            

      
      
      
    

        
I'll let ggobi authors respond to that, but ggobi is not about 3d at  
all - in fact 3d is just a very small part of ggobi. Again, I suspect  
it's not really interactive graphics that you have in mind and/or you  
are not familiar with it ...
[[split off to ggobi thread]]

            

      
      
      
    

        
I don't know about your prototype, so I cannot really comment on that,  
but gtkdatabox is not IG, either.

            

      
      
      
    

        
I do completely agree with that, but interactive means it satisfies  
basic requirements on IG such as the availability of selection,  
highlighting, queries, interactive change of parameters etc. This is  
not about 2d/3d clouds at all - that we have for decades already. Also  
this is not about "hacks" to glue on interactivity to existing  
graphics systems with a chewing gum. We need a versatile (possible  
extensible) set of interactive statistical plots -- at least that's  
what our experience shows.

Cheers,
Simon

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Dirk Eddelbuettel
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
[ Cool how nobody cared about Fritz' request not to post ideas yet :) ]

[ I broadly share Oleg's "wouldn't it be nice to have better plot devices"
  wish.  But I don't think it is a three-month summer target, and it's not 
  on the side of things Fritz / Manuel prefer as it is infrastructure rather
  than pure statistics ... Then again, maybe we should put that up to a wider
  discussion.  I like 'infrastructure' as R is a platform to me. ]

        
On 19 February 2009 at 09:33, Simon Urbanek wrote:

        
| If primitive 3d scatterplot interactivity is all you want, go with  
| rggobi. It's GTK and has all this already and much more. However,  
| ggobi also shows why GTK is not a good choice for general interactive  
| graphics toolkit - it [GTK] is slow and lacks reasonable graphics  
| support. OpenGL is IMHO a better way to go since IG don't really  
| leverage any of the widgets (you get them for free via R widgets  
| packages anyway) and OpenGL gives you excellent speed, alpha-support  
| and anti-aliasing etc.

I don't want to turn this into an all-out 'vi versus emacs' slugfest but:

-- GTk it not the only choice, and I have been very happy with Qt (and Qwt
   for a simple yet nice plot widget) on both Linux and Windows; I don't have
   access to a Mac so I didn't test there.

-- Qt supports OpenGL natively. The demos are very impressive (for OpenGL as
   well as the other widgets).

-- Deepayan has been working on Qt-based code to enhance R, as that appears
   to be 'unannounced' I won't post the SVN repo but allow me to state that 
   the code already ran all (or almost all) examples from the lattice book.

Dirk

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Sklyar, Oleg (London)
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Dear Simon, 

thanks for comments.

I better give a bit of a background first. We are analysing time series of financial data, often multivariate and with say 200K samples. It is quite a frequent situation that one needs to display multivariate time series of say 200K rows and 10 columns over the whole time range and be able to zoom in to look for effects of interest. The obvious choice of plots is a multiplot window with a shared x-axis, in this case time, zooming should be done simultaneously in all time series displayed.

I do understand this is a very specific example, but I am sure similar problems arise in other discilines: think of a genomic browser, sequencing or any other non-financial time series data etc. 

Essentially, no matter what the graphying or rendering technology used beneath (GTK, QT or anything else), my requirements, and yes they are in a way subjective, but on the other hand quite generic, would be a possibliity to produce multiplot windows (similar to say setting mfrow in par) with two simple features: zooming and panning simultaneously on all plots or independently. The support for Axis/pretty method callbacks is required because those are the methods that provide correct axis labeling independently on the class of the data. This is essentially the only thing that is not supported by the gtkdatabox widget as the rulers can only display numbers.

On the other issues of interactivity, I agree it is quite a broad term, but the functionality I describe above is pretty much basic.

As for Java objections: this is not because Java is slow on its own, but the interface is not native, requires a huge JVM for a fairly simple task and the interface is relatively slow and cumbersome. As soon as I see a package demonstrating good performance via rJava, I will be happy to say I was wrong. But essentially the same problem with 'playwith' package mentioned earlier -- it uses RGtk, gWidgets and therefore it is slow -- it is not that GTK is slow, but the complex binding from R via RGtk to GTK. If used natively, it is very fast.

            

      
      
      
    

        
Where can I find it to have a look? No matter that it is in development, if it fits the needs, I will only be happy to contribute what I can.

            

      
      
      
    

        
I cannot send you an example of an R package using gtkdatabox from the office, but I will create a small demo pack at home and will send it to you separately as to indicate what I am looking into. Possibly it is not IG, but this is essentially what I described above, although quite primitive (but it was a one-day project for me, not 3-months).

            

      
      
      
    

        
Agree completely.

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Simon Urbanek
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On Feb 19, 2009, at 11:20 , Yihui Xie wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
Yes, but that's exactly what interactive graphics are NOT about (you  
just posted a good "chewing gum" reference from my previous e- 
mail ;)). You can put together ad-hoc hacks (and many have tried it in  
R before), but the result will not be general interactive graphics.  
What people don't realize is that a lot in IG software is about user  
interface and HCI. Having one-shot tools for very specific tasks  
doesn't really help to solve the big picture (although it may sort of  
solve your specific immediate problem). There are many good  
interactive software applications out there, but just linking them to  
R is just half of the story.

What we need is a more general framework for interactive graphics -  
this requires more than just a graphics subsystem - you have to depart  
from the concept of graphics objects and include "statistical objects"  
in the mix such that the underlying data/statistics etc. can be  
identified by linking back though the graphics. This is something we  
still lack in R --- but I hope we will get there sooner or later...

Cheers,
Simon

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

            

      
      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Hadley Wickham
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

          

      
      
      
    

        
Well apart from the interactivity, you have that with ggplot2.

Hadley

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Oleg Sklyar
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Simon,

as promised I attach a simple package that utilises gtkdatabox. It is
Linux only, sorry for that: as it was hacked together in the last two
hours I did not have time for Windows stuff.

Under my Ubuntu I only had to install libgtkdatabox-dev from standard
repos (which would pull libgtk2-dev where necessary). The package relies
on gtkdatabox being found under the standard pkg-config path (i.e.
custom path installs would be difficult until compiler flags are
manually changed). This is for simplicity of ./configure

After installing, simply run example(databox) and use your mouse for
zooming-in with quite a standard left mouse click for drawing a
selection box (a click is required within a selection to zoom in); right
mouse click zooms out. I think it is CTRL-right or SHIFT-right to zoom
out to full scale.

This is a kind of functionality I would like to see. I do not mean the
gtkdatabox, but the idea.

With this one it is quite easy to add more plots to the window and as
the user has control over callbacks it is easy to do autorescale on
multiple plots if required. The limitation is the ruler of the
gtkdatabox itself (no time), no NA treatment, implementation via
increases pix buffer on zoom (rather than off-screen) etc.

I do not know if r-devel will allow a tar.gz source through, but if
anybody else is interested, please let me know and I will send the
source directly.

Best,
Oleg

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: databox_0.0.1.tar.gz
Type: application/x-gzip
Size: 24621 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/attachments/20090219/bc5611b8/attachment.gz>

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Simon Urbanek
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On Feb 19, 2009, at 16:36 , hadley wickham wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
Ehm - interactivity is the point here ...

Cheers,
S

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Friedrich Leisch
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

          

      
      
      
    

        
> [ Cool how nobody cared about Fritz' request not to post ideas yet :) ]

Well, I kind of expected that ;-)

See also below.
  
  > [ I broadly share Oleg's "wouldn't it be nice to have better plot devices"
  >   wish.  But I don't think it is a three-month summer target,

Yes, that's exactly what came to my mind first: As usual, please do
read docs before you post ... in this case the format of SOC (I
included the link in my original email, googling for "summer of code"
will also take you there): a student is paid to code three months for
us, the 3 months inlcude writing documentation. The student will not
be an expert in R internals, and no magic wizard. The student should
familiarize himself with the project before the actual coding period,
but there is only so much you can do in limited time. I think you can
expect a similar amount of code as in a master/diploma thesis (but
NOT a dissertation).

If you had waited for Manuels email you would also have learned about
another VERY IMPORTANT POINT: The collection of ideas for summer of
code is not like writing a list of wishes to Santa Claus (or the
Christkind or whatever your local variation may be): we only need
ideas which YOU ARE WILLING TO MENTOR, i.e., you write the specs for
the project, communicate with students interested in the project,
select the best applicant and supervise the student during the coding
period. I am not sure everyone on this thread is aware about this (if
all of you were I apologize). If you propose an idea, you
simultaneously agree to volunteer a considerable amount of your own
time. But that time can really be worth the effort (otherwise we
wouldn't be doing it).




  > and it's not on the side of things Fritz / Manuel prefer as it is
  >   infrastructure rather than pure statistics ... Then again, maybe
  >   we should put that up to a wider discussion.  I like
  >   'infrastructure' as R is a platform to me. ]


I have no "preference" for pure statistics: last year we had 75%
infrastructure ideas and 25% statistics. I simply want to shift the
percentages to a more even ratio, because we had many application on
the statistical side and I don't want to waste talent. It is also our
USP in the summer of code.



Best,
Fritz

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Dirk Eddelbuettel
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On 20 February 2009 at 12:06, Friedrich Leisch wrote:

        
| >>>>> On Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:52:19 -0600,

        
| >>>>> Dirk Eddelbuettel (DE) wrote:

        
| 
|   > [ Cool how nobody cared about Fritz' request not to post ideas yet :) ]
| 
| Well, I kind of expected that ;-)
| 
| See also below.
|   
|   > [ I broadly share Oleg's "wouldn't it be nice to have better plot devices"
|   >   wish.  But I don't think it is a three-month summer target,
| 
| Yes, that's exactly what came to my mind first: As usual, please do
| read docs before you post ... in this case the format of SOC (I
| included the link in my original email, googling for "summer of code"
| will also take you there): a student is paid to code three months for
| us, the 3 months inlcude writing documentation. The student will not
| be an expert in R internals, and no magic wizard. The student should
| familiarize himself with the project before the actual coding period,
| but there is only so much you can do in limited time. I think you can
| expect a similar amount of code as in a master/diploma thesis (but
| NOT a dissertation).
| 
| If you had waited for Manuels email you would also have learned about
| another VERY IMPORTANT POINT: The collection of ideas for summer of
| code is not like writing a list of wishes to Santa Claus (or the
| Christkind or whatever your local variation may be): we only need
| ideas which YOU ARE WILLING TO MENTOR, i.e., you write the specs for
| the project, communicate with students interested in the project,
| select the best applicant and supervise the student during the coding
| period. I am not sure everyone on this thread is aware about this (if
| all of you were I apologize). If you propose an idea, you
| simultaneously agree to volunteer a considerable amount of your own
| time. But that time can really be worth the effort (otherwise we
| wouldn't be doing it).

I am not sure if you're lecturing just to me or the audience at large; if it
just me allow me to remind you that I mentored last year and helped to bring
a project from proposal to inclusion onto CRAN and into user's hands.  In
fact, I mentored another one (on cran source to deb package automation) at
Debian as well.  So yes, I am in fact fully aware of most of these points.

I would at this point also like to correct something you said in the earlier
mail where you said that may get "four to six slots". I am doubtful about
that. O verall number of GSoC slots are _down_ as per Leslie. We have no
priors on whether more or less organisations are admitted or not. If I were a
betting man, I'd say three to four slots.

So let's make them count.

Dirk

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Friedrich Leisch
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

          

      
      
      
    

        

        
> On 20 February 2009 at 12:06, Friedrich Leisch wrote:

        
> | >>>>> On Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:52:19 -0600,

        
> | >>>>> Dirk Eddelbuettel (DE) wrote:

        
> | 
  > |   > [ Cool how nobody cared about Fritz' request not to post ideas yet :) ]
  > | 
  > | Well, I kind of expected that ;-)
  > | 
  > | See also below.
  > |   
  > |   > [ I broadly share Oleg's "wouldn't it be nice to have better plot devices"
  > |   >   wish.  But I don't think it is a three-month summer target,
  > | 
  > | Yes, that's exactly what came to my mind first: As usual, please do
  > | read docs before you post ... in this case the format of SOC (I
  > | included the link in my original email, googling for "summer of code"
  > | will also take you there): a student is paid to code three months for
  > | us, the 3 months inlcude writing documentation. The student will not
  > | be an expert in R internals, and no magic wizard. The student should
  > | familiarize himself with the project before the actual coding period,
  > | but there is only so much you can do in limited time. I think you can
  > | expect a similar amount of code as in a master/diploma thesis (but
  > | NOT a dissertation).
  > | 
  > | If you had waited for Manuels email you would also have learned about
  > | another VERY IMPORTANT POINT: The collection of ideas for summer of
  > | code is not like writing a list of wishes to Santa Claus (or the
  > | Christkind or whatever your local variation may be): we only need
  > | ideas which YOU ARE WILLING TO MENTOR, i.e., you write the specs for
  > | the project, communicate with students interested in the project,
  > | select the best applicant and supervise the student during the coding
  > | period. I am not sure everyone on this thread is aware about this (if
  > | all of you were I apologize). If you propose an idea, you
  > | simultaneously agree to volunteer a considerable amount of your own
  > | time. But that time can really be worth the effort (otherwise we
  > | wouldn't be doing it).

  > I am not sure if you're lecturing just to me or the audience at
  > large;

Of course to the audfiance at large, I know that you know the rules of
the game. That I answered your email, in the thread was more or less
chance. Sorry if I gave a wrong impression (wouldn't have possibly
thought that you could feel addressed personally).

My sincere apologies!!!



  > I would at this point also like to correct something you said in
  > the earlier mail where you said that may get "four to six
  > slots". I am doubtful about that. O verall number of GSoC slots
  > are _down_ as per Leslie. We have no priors on whether more or
  > less organisations are admitted or not. If I were a betting man,
  > I'd say three to four slots.

OK, didn't know that number of slots is down (should probably read the
docs better myself). I was assuming that the number of slots is approx
the same, and hoping for more slots in the second year (because I know
that all organizations get fewer in their first year).

Best,
Fritz

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Yihui Xie
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
Hi Simon,

Yes I agree with you on the definition of IG (selection, data query,
...), but I only meant to respond to Oleg's "R lacks functionality
that would allow displaying of interactive plots with two distinct
functionalities: zooming and panning." I thought that was just a
problem to adjust the x and y limits, so I posted the "chewing gum"
:-)

For Oleg: sorry I forgot to mention that currently getGraphicsEvent()
only works for Windows screen display.

Regards,
Yihui
--
Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com>
Phone: +86-(0)10-82509086 Fax: +86-(0)10-82509086
Mobile: +86-15810805877
Homepage: http://www.yihui.name
School of Statistics, Room 1037, Mingde Main Building,
Renmin University of China, Beijing, 100872, China



On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 1:38 AM, Simon Urbanek

        
<simon.urbanek at r-project.org> wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Deepayan Sarkar
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On 2/19/09, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:

        
[...]

            

      
      
      
    

        
Just to expand on that: yes, I have been working on a Qt-based
infrastructure, and Michael Lawrence is also involved now, and has
been working on refining and optimizing it for more general uses. The
details are still in flux, but we hope to have something to show at
DSC.

Which is not to say that other alternatives wouldn't be good, of course.

-Deepayan

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Thomas Lumley
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On Fri, 20 Feb 2009, Friedrich Leisch wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
The principle applies to some extent to all "wouldn't it be nice if R did..." comments.  If something would obviously be a widely appreciated addition to R (such as good interactive graphics), there is probably some good reason that it is hard.  It's relatively unlikely that no-one had thought of it or had realized it would be worth having.

For ideas like that we are likely to need some way to make the implementation easier (money, code, new approaches to the programming,...).


         -thomas

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle