[R-gui] further on the Rcmdr package
John Fox <jfox@mcmaster.ca> writes:
A partly unresolved issue is the problem raised by Dirk Eddelbuettel on Sunday: Dirk found that both the R session and the Commander windows locked up after the Rcmdr package was loaded on his Debian Linux system. Following Dirk's suggestion, I've added an option to Rcmdr to call tkwait until the Commander window is closed. Apparently this solves the problem that Dirk experienced, but an unfortunate consequence is that the command prompt in the R session is disabled until the Commander window is closed. Although this isn't a fatal problem -- commands can still be entered through the GUI, including via the log/script window -- it would be nice to be able to enter commands directly at the command prompt as well. I can do this when the call to tkwait is bypassed on Windows systems and on my Red Hat Linux system. Since no one else reported the problem, I assume that the package also works without the call to tkwait on a number of other systems.
This is definitely not supposed to happen, so perhaps a little session with gdb to figure out where things are getting stuck? I do have some suspicions about interference between R and threaded Tcl libs, but Dirk knows about that.
Another, though smaller, unresolved issue has to do with my inability to use the Rcmdr package (or any tcltk-based code) with R under the MDI in Windows. Can anyone tell me what the source of the problem is (that is, why dialog boxes won't stay in front of the R-GUI window)? Is it likely that the problem will be fixed? I actually prefer the SDI, but notice that most of my students like the MDI, which is the default when the Windows distribution of R is installed.
It might be useful to query the Tcl community on that one. Various ideas have been suggested, see for instance a search on groups.google.com for tk Windows "always on top" Another, more radical idea could be to get the usual MDI code to generate a blank window for the Rcmdr, get the hWnd of it somehow and then use tktoplevel(....,use=hWnd,....). There are several unknowns in that equation, though.
As usual, comments and suggestions are appreciated. I expect that I'll submit a version of the Rcmdr package to CRAN soon.
I played with it briefly. A few random comments: - Loading packages and installing them from CRAN could be added quite easily (there's a bit of stuff in the tkStartGUI function, which you'd be welcome to lift). - It shouldn't be hard to create a list of loadable datasets and select from it. - Perhaps, use with(dataframe, ...) instead of attach/detach constructs? - It's not easy to find out how to convert variables to factors. If categorical variables come in as numerics, there are lots of things that you cannot do, so the user needs a way to identify and solve the problem quickly. - The recode syntax is a bit arcane. I think SAS/Analyst does this kind of stuff with a table.
O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3 c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907