I have already recieved two very helpful replies. Let me describe the
problem we are trying to solve more clearly -- one of the suggestions was
along a line I'd never thought of, and I'd like to encourage more!
R is being used in a microarray/QC situation, in essentially a batch
mode. The applications that are "running the show" in terms of interacting
with the user's terminal and the main database are constrained to a
very particular environment, due to other reasons (ones I happen to agree
with, it's not just politics). This outer application "X"
- interact with the user to define "what data to look at"
- and what to do with it
- toss off an R batch script (a few calls, to perhaps complex
functions) and a bunch of data
- R sends back a "blob" that X can display
The "blob" is an html doc with tables and plots. The graphlet part comes
from the desire to allow the lab tech to drill down to plots that are
always defined and present, but rarely displayed. The main plot contains
results from several experiments, one looks odd, so they can click on it
to see the per-experiment results.
Because of environmental and speed constraints, this is not an interactive
R session. The graphlets package allows this type of operation with java.
Terry Therneau