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[R-pkg-devel] tinyfiledialogs - The bindings are ready, but I need help to make of package of it

4 messages · ti@yiiiedi@iogs m@iii@g oii yse@gri@@com, Ivan Krylov, Brad Eck

#
https://tinyfiledialogs.sourceforge.net

Hi,

I am the author of tinyfiledialogs a cross-platform C C++ library 
(windows, Mac, Unix) which offers many modal dialogs and popup 
notifications (both for graphic and console modes). It aims to be 
extremely easy to use. There is no init, no main loop, and no external 
dependencies. It is used by hundreds projects on GitHub.

The following github call returns almost 15000 files (you need to be 
logged on github)

https://github.com/search?q=tinyfd+OR+tinyfiledialogs&type=code


With the latest version v3.14, I've just released the bindings for R.

I've been pointed to the documentation link on how to write a package,
but it would really help if someone who knows what to do could direct me.

Thanks in advance

Guillaume Vareille


 ??? # first load the included library (it could easily be compiled on 
the target machine)
 ??? dyn.load("tinyfiledialogsLinux64.so")

 ??? # then load the included R interface
 ??? tinyfd_openFileDialog <- function(aTitle, aDefaultPathAndFile , 
aNumOfFilterPatterns,
 ??? ??? ??? ??? aFilterPatterns, aSingleFilterDescription , 
aAllowMultipleSelects)
 ??? {
 ?? ?? result <- .C("tfd_openFileDialog",
 ?? ???????? charToRaw(aTitle),
 ??? ?? ? ?? lOpenFile = aDefaultPathAndFile ,
 ??????? ??? as.integer(aNumOfFilterPatterns) ,
 ??????? ??? aFilterPatterns ,
 ??????? ??? charToRaw(aSingleFilterDescription) ,
 ??????? ??? as.integer(aAllowMultipleSelects) )

 ?? ?? if ( result$lOpenFile == "NULL" ) return()
 ?? ?? else return(result$lOpenFile)
 ??? }

 ??? # now, you can call the dialog
 ??? lFilename <- tinyfd_openFileDialog( "a title" , 
"/Users/bardos/Documents/" , 1 , c ("*.txt","*.jpg") , "some files" , 0 )
#
Dear Guillaume Vareille,

? Wed, 20 Sep 2023 12:30:53 +0200
tinyfiledialogs at ysengrin.com ?????:
There's potentially a lot to tell. Converting the entire Writing R
Extensions [*] into e-mails is a poor use of one's time. Do you have
more specific questions? If you don't know where to start, try
utils::package.skeleton or the pkgKitten package (which aims to pass R
CMD check right from the start). There's also books like R Packages by
Hadley Wickham and Jennifer Bryan, but they mention a lot of techniques
and third-party dependencies that you don't have to use.
You will need to put your source files into the src/ subdirectory of
the package and arrange for them to get compiled (see WRE 1.1.5 and
1.2.1). It's best to write a special entry point in order to let R know
about the functions you intend to call (see WRE 5.4).

Does your code have third-party dependencies? If you'd like to put the
package on CRAN, you will need to bundle your own code with the package
(since it's probably not available yet in major GNU/Linux
distributions, macOS recipes and MXE) but set up a ./configure script
to locate the third-party dependencies while the package is being
installed: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/external_libs.html
In R, strings have encodings. A string can be stored in UTF-8, Latin-1,
the native locale encoding (which may include anything from
Windows-936 to KOI8-R) or even as arbitrary bytes, which admittedly
makes it less of a string (see ?Encoding).

x1 <- `Encoding<-`('fran\xe7ais', 'latin1')
x2 <- `Encoding<-`('fran\xc3\xa7ais', 'UTF-8')
x1 == x2 # TRUE, they encode the same characters
identical(charToRaw(x1), charToRaw(x2)) # not even the same length

Which encoding does tfd_openFileDialog() use for the file names and
paths? Does it work with UCRT on Windows in UTF-8 locale mode? (Can you
return a filename that is not representable in the ANSI codepage?) You
will probably need to convert the strings into a certain encoding before
passing them to tfd_openFileDialog(...) (e.g. enc2utf8(.)).
What happens if I create a file named NULL on my system and try to open
it?

Good luck, and I hope that your effort results in a good R package!
#
Hi,

There are no dependencies and everything is considered/treated as UTF-8.
On windows, I internally do all the conversions between UTF-8 and UTF-16.
I also offer functions to convert between UTF-8 , UTF-16 and MBCS.
I don't know what UCRT is, but tinyfiledialogs is compatible with all 
versions of windows from XP to 11,
all the versions of mac since osx 10.2 and all the unix versions I have 
ever came accross.


I was hoping to find a tldr version of the "how to write an extension".
The source code is just one C file (+ header) and one R file for the 
interface.
What files are supposed to be in my package ? the C file or the compiled 
shared libraries ?
What else ? a documentation file ? is there a model to follow ?

thanks for your help

guillaume
On 9/21/23 11:33, Ivan Krylov wrote:

  
  
#
Dear Guillaume -

Here is a minimal example of an R package that uses C source:
https://github.com/bradleyjeck/fancyRpkg

As the timestamps show, I made this a few years ago, so some things might
not conform to the current version of Writing R Extensions.  But it should
get you started.

The motivation I had was to provide an R package that binds to a simulation
engine written in C.
That package is on CRAN and could be used as a more in depth example:
https://cran.r-project.org/package=epanet2toolkit

Hope this helps,

Brad
On Fri, Sep 22, 2023 at 6:33?AM <tinyfiledialogs at ysengrin.com> wrote: