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Mac woes
3 messages · Stuart Vyse, John Fox, Brian Ripley
Dear Stuart,
-----Original Message----- From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
On
Behalf Of Stuart Vyse Sent: January-08-09 10:41 PM To: r-help at r-project.org Subject: [R] Mac woes I am new to R but have spent a little time messing around with it. I am running version 2.8.1 under Leopard OS 10.5 on a power PC and also on my laptop, which is Intel. Unless, I am wrong, this version is just a bit buggy. 1. In the R Commander, there is no direct entry of data. The Edit menu does not include a "New data set" choice, as advertised in the Windows version.
First, you shouldn't necessarily blame R for failings of the R Commander, since it is a contributed package and not part of the base system. In this case, however, the "New data set" menu item is absent under Mac OS X because the data editor hangs on an empty data frame -- at least when I tried it.
2. Entering data from a text file is not always trouble free. Variables do not always seem to be understood as variables.
It's not possible to know what the source of the difficulty is without the files that are causing problems. I suspect that the data files aren't properly prepared. Can you provide an example?
Scatterplot and Matrix scatterplot options under Graph are grayed out when they shouldn't be.
The scatterplot menu item is grayed out if there are fewer than two numerical variables in the active data set; the scatterplot-matrix item is grayed out if there are fewer than three numerical variables. That seems sensible to me, but again, without the data, it's not possible to know whether the Rcmdr is behaving incorrectly or whether you want it to do something that it considers unreasonable, such as making a scatterplot for categorical variables.
3. Finally, attempting to edit your imported data file (by clicking the "Edit data set") does open an editor window, but clicking around in it to delete variables, etc, invariably leads to the program hanging. The spinning beach ball.
Here, the Rcmdr invokes the R data editor, and I've encountered problems similar to those that you describe with the data editor on the Mac, both when called from the Rcmdr and from the R command prompt. For example, if I load just the car package and edit(Prestige), adding variables and rows, and deleting variables and rows, eventually I can make R hang or, on exit, produce an error. I'm running R 2.8.1 under Mac OS X 10.5.5. Perhaps I should suppress the edit button as well.
Am I missing something? Any suggestions?
Yes, be more specific about what produces the problems you're experiencing. Regards, John
SV Stuart Vyse Professor Box 5621 web:
http://www.stuartvyse.com
Department of Psychology Phone: 860-439-2339 Connecticut College FAX 860-439-5300 New London, CT 06320 email: stuart.vyse at conncoll.edu [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
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On Thu, 8 Jan 2009, Stuart Vyse wrote:
I am new to R but have spent a little time messing around with it. I am running version 2.8.1 under Leopard OS 10.5 on a power PC and also on my laptop, which is Intel. Unless, I am wrong, this version is just a bit buggy. 1. In the R Commander, there is no direct entry of data. The Edit menu does not include a "New data set" choice, as advertised in the Windows version. 2. Entering data from a text file is not always trouble free. Variables do not always seem to be understood as variables. Scatterplot and Matrix scatterplot options under Graph are grayed out when they shouldn't be. 3. Finally, attempting to edit your imported data file (by clicking the "Edit data set") does open an editor window, but clicking around in it to delete variables, etc, invariably leads to the program hanging. The spinning beach ball. Am I missing something? Any suggestions?
Are you talking about Rcmdr only? That is contributed software, so it is unfair to blame 'R" for it (and not to give credit to John Fox for it). There is a specific list for R on Macs, R-sig-Mac -- see the posting guide. Mac issues do tend to get overlooked on this very busy general list, and you weere asked in the posting guide to 'discuss possible bugs' there. One short answer is that Rcmdr is a Tcl/Tk program, and Tcl/Tk does not work particularly well on your minority platform. But detailed, reproducible reports to the author (John Fox for Rcmdr) or the appropriate list (R-sig-mac) will help to improve the workarounds. And I know John bought a Mac to help support Mac users and is unfailingly helpful to users of his software.
Stuart Vyse Professor Box 5621 web: http://www.stuartvyse.com Department of Psychology Phone: 860-439-2339 Connecticut College FAX 860-439-5300 New London, CT 06320 email: stuart.vyse at conncoll.edu
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 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595