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R-beta: R with gnuwin32

4 messages · Thomas Lumley, Peter Dalgaard, Balasubramanian Narasimhan

#
[I had to hand-approve this mail, since it contains "subscribe" 
	 in the first few lines.  Martin Maechler, list administrator]

1) This is very interesting stuff.

2) But it really belongs on R-devel, not R-help. R-help is for helping
users with installing and using R, not debating its future or
discussing technical issues. Could I ask you to subscribe and then we
move the discussion there? (Don't worry, R-devel is not a very high
volume list.)

guido@sirio.stat.unipd.it writes:
Same thing here.
...
I tried essentially the same stunt, but couldn't figure out how to get
the Windows console and graphics going, "Multiple Document Interface"
and all that. In particular, there's trouble with the gnuwin header
files versus the MS Platform SDK used in the sources. Does this mean
that you have a version running just like the "official" one? And
could it run under Win3 too?
I wouldn't be surprised, although Watcon does some register-passing
tricks, which one would think made it faster, (as well as incompatible
with other C compilers...!)
In the R-snapshot at CRAN (src/devel), I think. The very latest
versions are on Roberts computer...
Hmm. I don't know exactly what you mean here. I don't think that there
is a true writeup documenting any of this.
Definitely!

If yes, I can make it available.
How about the cross-compilers?
Agreed, but binaries (of R *and* all the packages) will in a
not-so-long perspective be needed for practical people.
Hmm. Does this line in src/regex/WHATSNEW ring a bell? (Not that I
know what I'm talking about, I just use grep...)

you have to build regex.h explicitly by "make h".  The two known bugs
This sounds interesting. An alternative that I have been playing with
is to use Tcl/Tk, with a longer term perspective of developing R/Tk
language bindings like in STk (Scheme/Tk). This could have the benefit
of automatic (hah!) *Mac* portability.

Note, BTW, that some substantial changes have been made in the
nonreleased 0.62 version (see aforementioned snapshot) to the parser
and I/O parts, specifically to cater for windowing systems.
8 days later
#
There has been some talk about missing header files for compiling the
windows stuff under gcc .  A company called Willows (www.willows.com) 
produces a set of tools for porting Windows programs to other platforms,
including the necessary header files, all under the GNU LGPL.  This might
have the files we need (I don't know enough about the problem to tell for
sure).

	-thomas

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#
Thomas Lumley <thomas@biostat.washington.edu> writes:
These were checked out by someone on the Gnuwin32 list a couple of
weeks ago and were found inadequate. I also tried them myself without
luck at some point.

Basically, every time you try to lift header files off of another
package in this game you find that they are incompatible in some
*other* aspect and cause your programs to get burnt to cinders in an
astounding flurry of error messages...

As I understand Guido M's work, he's filled in the few gaps necessary
to get the current R/Windows functions to run by inserting the
relevant definitions by hand. I think most of these definitions are
already in *some* freeware toolkit, so they're not likely to cause
legal trouble (and the possibility of copyrighting the information
that WM_DDE_FIRST is 0x03E0 etc., is dubious in the first place). I
haven't gotten around to looking at the details (today was crazy
enough already!) but I expect that what he's done already should make
it possible to do what we want as far as current sources are
concerned. Trouble may arise as we try to improve the Win32 functions,
though.

There are two obvious pathways to proceed along in that case:

1) Figure out exactly what you *can* do with the gnu headers and use
that. Obviously requires knowledge of the Win32 API.

2) Use a portable toolkit. V, wxWindows, Tcl/Tk, with the latter
appealing quite a bit to me as I've already indicated on a number of
occasions.
#
Peter> 2) Use a portable toolkit. V, wxWindows, Tcl/Tk, with the
    Peter> latter appealing quite a bit to me as I've already
    Peter> indicated on a number of occasions.

I have just started looking into the "latter". I've done some work
with Tcl/Tk but I am just looking seriously at R sources now. Should
we form a core group to coordinate this effort? This might help me come
up to speed quickly.

________________________________________________________________
B. Narasimhan                            naras@stat.stanford.edu
                             http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~naras





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