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R mac gui improvements

6 messages · Thomas Julou, Jiang Peng, Simon Urbanek +1 more

Original
Simon Urbanek
# 
Thomas,

thanks for the suggestions.
On Jun 12, 2009, at 5:06 , Thomas Julou wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
I'm not a big fan of toolbars with "few" features since they take away  
space unnecessarily (some of the old tools in R.app are bad  
enough ;)), but that's a matter of taste ...

            

      
      
      
    

        
Potentially useful - but not really on my priority list. However,  
contributions are welcome.

            

      
      
      
    

        
We have menus and shortcuts for those already ...

            

      
      
      
    

        
From a UI point of view it's a bit questionable how to do that  
properly (having more independent devices in one window), yet, again  
if someone finds it useful [s]he should figure that out. However, you  
are aware of the history accessible via <Cmd><Left>/<Right> I suppose?

            

      
      
      
    

        
As the name suggests Quartz is implemented using Quartz, not PDF Kit.  
Quartz is more general and not limited to PDF.

Note that Quartz is a very modular infrastructure so you can even  
write a package that provides an enhanced Quartz on-screen window.  
Clearly if it was based on qdCococa it would be easy to fold it into R  
later. Also note that Quartz is part of R and not the GUI, so it will  
benefit all Mac users.

Cheers,
Simon

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      David Winsemius
    

    

      
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On the subject of the GUI's management of the quartz window, I am  
wondering if there is an option in the current controls that I could  
change somewhere that would bring the quartz window to the foreground  
when a new plot is displayed?

On the subject of possibly using Apple's PDFkit, I wondered whether it  
might have a benefit in off-loading from the Mac developers the  
programming details involved in creating the screen display and allow  
file creation. At the moment there is only one file format supported  
(pdf) and the copy function does not apparently create a clipboard  
file that OpenOffice.org can paste. I cannot be sure that both  
problems would be solved by using an Apple PDFkit interface. After  
looking at the PDFkit pages I am thinking neither would be immediately  
solved, and the path forward for me would be a mechanism for invoking  
the pdf device and triggering a system script for reopening the newest  
file in Preview, which would then offer me all the facilities I seek.

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    
2 days later

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Thomas Julou
    

    

      
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Dear Simon,

Thank you for your answer  (and once again, for this very nice gui you  
built, and which puts a few more colors in our daily work ;)

I definitely agree that my suggestion was not very mature? I would  
rephrase it this way:
	- why not adding zoom in, zoom out, and zoom to fit window size in  
the quartz menu (with scrollable plot when it's zoomed in, and  
keyboard shortcuts). This would allow to keep the resizing when window  
is enlarged above current zooming.
	- once this would be done, why not adding toolbar and contextual menu  
to give access to these functions (plus "copy" and plot history  
browsing as well). About the toolbar, it could be a pref setting to  
display it or not by default, and would probably encourage newcomers  
to use these nice features.

As you see, I care more about features than toolbar and not at all  
about the tools and tabs?
But I really think this zoom feature would really help user in data  
exploration, allowing to zoom in and out within plot.

I really would like my programming skills allow me to contribute to  
this R gui, unfortunately I'm not trained at cocoa. And it sounds like  
this is not the easiest stuff to start with? One day I'll have time  
to read and work hillegass' cocoa book I bought a long time ago ;)

Thank you again for your attention. Best,

Thomas





Le 12 juin 09 ? 16:54, Simon Urbanek a ?crit :