[R-gui] [Rd] R GUI considerations (was: R, Wine, and multi-threadedness)

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I think it is a little premature to entirely discount
Gtk2, especially if it is based on Philippe's remark
below.  Philippe, did you try other applications,
different themes, different configurations, or just the vanilla GIMP?
and when? While I don't necessarily disagree with the claim that it is
different from Windows look and feel, it requires a little bit more
evidence.

When I complete the SWIG module for R and the associated
more advanced tools, I may pursue an automatically
created interface to wxWidgets that would by-pass the
RSPython dependency.

Unfortunately, many people have become more vested in
Tcl and sub-optimal solutions because it is there.
We need to keep pushing infrastructural development and
what is feasible.  For some of us, the collection
of widgets and the possibilities that they introduce
are more important than cosmetic details, which of
course are important but won't necessarily advance
the paradigms of analysis.

Philippe, while you think that people are to individualistic
in their development of GUIs, I think perhaps a better
interpretation is that many of us are trying to develop
GUIs quite different from what you have in mind.  Your mail
talks as if there is a single, yet-to-be created GUI. There is no
single concept of a GUI and we have been over this many times
to little avail.  But many of us think that a generic GUI
is of little research or even practical value. But we do
think customized interfaces, e.g. to interactive, dynamic
documents, is worthwhile.  Hence the differences. And hence
also the development of truly extensible toolkits, rather than
specific views of what a GUI would like.  It is great that
you want to focus on a particular group of potential users;
likewise for JGR, Rcmdr, etc.

Also, while R is a functional language which Duncan Murdoch
has mentioned in another mail and so is different from
other languages such as C/C++, Python, etc. that have been used
to develop GUIs,  the ability to have mutable state via closures
has not inhibited us in developing GUIs in R.  And the event
loop is not intrinsically different in these other languages
(except Java). It is just something that some of us have to agree on.

Enough for now.

 D.

[R-gui] [Rd] R GUI considerations (was: R, Wine, and multi-threadedness)

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