Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.05.10005032144570.24800-100000@auk.stats>
Date: 2000-05-03T20:49:30Z
From: Brian Ripley
Subject: R Documentation(s)
In-Reply-To: <852568D4.0058F9D6.00@EPAHUB2.RTP.EPA.GOV>
On Wed, 3 May 2000 Setzer.Woodrow at epamail.epa.gov wrote:
>
>
> If I may throw in my two cents. I sometimes consult with scientists who use
> GUI-based statistical packages for doing "simple" analyses of their data. The
> packages I've seen don't do a good job of producing a usable audit trail. If
> someone comes to me and says "What does this mean?" or "What do I do now?", I
> pretty much have to go and watch their actual keystrokes while they repeat
> (hopefully) the operations.
>
> One real advantages to the dialects of S is that the script that does the
> analysis serves (or can serve, if well-commented) as an audit trail that can be
> rerun (with changes, if needed). One take-home lesson here is, if there is to
> be a GUI that produces R function calls, it would be really helpful if it were
> easy to insert comments that document the actions, and that the function calls
> be captured in a file that can be 'sourced' to re-run the analysis.
The Axum-based GUI in S-PLUS 2000 does keep a history: you can even dump it
to a script to give command-line equivalent commands. (That is commands
that run Axum, not say traditional graphics near-equivalents.) That seems
the best of both worlds.
The R for Windows GUI does have a limited programmability. Everything you
do there generates S language commands that go into the commands history
(whether you like it or not). In both R and S-PLUS the history files are
plain text and can be edited at will later.
--
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 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
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