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text editor for teaching R

8 messages · Stuart Wagenius, Greg Snow, G. Jay Kerns +4 more

Original
Stuart Wagenius
# 
Hi,

I teach statistics using R in a classroom with Windows machines. For
class, I use Notepad and cut and paste to the console. For my own
work, I use a Mac or I use a PC with Tinn-R. The send-to-R feature is
great. I would like to have the students use Tinn-R because the
send-to-R feature is so nice, but recent versions of Tinn-R are too
complicated and quirky. I feel that trying to set-up Tinn-R on the
class computers would be a hassle and using it in class may be too
distracting.

Can anyone recommend a text editor for teaching R on machines running
Windows Vista? Is there something simple to set up, stable to run, and
easy to use?

Thanks,
Stuart
Greg Snow
# 
In windows, the simplest editor to use is the built in one in the R gui.  Just click on file, then New Script and it will open a blank editor (or use open script to read in a file).  This is a pretty basic editor, it does not do syntax highlighting, paren matching an several other things that are nice in Tinn-R, ESS/emacs and others.  

But one really nice thing is that you can highlight a section of code and just click a single button on the toolbar and the highlighted code will be copied to the command line and run.  Or without a selection, the same button will run the current line and advance to the next line (so clicking the button several times runs the next several lines of code).

And you don't have to install anything besides R.

Hope this helps,
G. Jay Kerns
# 
Dear Stuart,
On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 4:10 PM, Greg Snow <Greg.Snow at imail.org> wrote:
I had to delete most of my reply because Greg Snow said it better than me.  :-)

I have also used Emacs/ESS for upper-division students; you didn't
mention the level of your classes.  If your students are introductory
and have grown up clicking buttons then it will be painful for them.
But Emacs/ESS is very stable, easy to install and setup via Vincent
Goulet,  has syntax highlighting, automatic spacing, code completion,
can handle R transcripts... the list goes on and on...

I would not recommend Emacs/ESS for freshmen who have mice for right
hands, but anything over the introductory level has been fine for me
(or even introductory if your students are sharp).

Good luck,
Jay





***************************************************
G. Jay Kerns, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Youngstown State University
Youngstown, OH 44555-0002 USA
Office: 1035 Cushwa Hall
Phone: (330) 941-3310 Office (voice mail)
-3302 Department
-3170 FAX
VoIP: gjkerns at ekiga.net
E-mail: gkerns at ysu.edu
http://people.ysu.edu/~gkerns/
Stuart Wagenius
# 
Oh yes. Very nice. Thank you for your help!

Stuart
On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 3:22 PM, G. Jay Kerns <gkerns at ysu.edu> wrote:
Ian Fellows
# 
Also of note is JGR, which has syntax highlighting, paren matching. You  can also send to R via command-return. And if your students have mice for right hands as Jay put it, Deducer (shameless plug) has integrated dialogs for most basic statistical tasks.


Ian
Liviu Andronic
# 
Hello
On 12/2/09, Stuart Wagenius <s-wagenius at northwestern.edu> wrote:
I am also a JGR user, resorting to Rcmdr&Plug-ins and Deducer for
certain tasks. Recently I discovered that Geany can also be used
relatively easily for R. Compared to JGR, Geany is a more comfortable
text editor, has tabs, and integrates a console in its interface. With
a small gotcha, it is easy to select text in the editor and send it
for execution to R. (The gotcha: the current Geany release requires
that, after select&send to R terminal, the user manually hit enter to
evaluate the code. The SVN version contains a hidden option,
send_selection_unsafe=false, which can be set to 'true' in the config
file; at that point select&send will automatically execute the R
code.)
Otherwise, Both JGR and Geany (as well Deducer and Rcmdr) are cross-platform.

Regards
Liviu
Philippe GROSJEAN
# 
Hello,

You mention you want something simple, thus a lightweight text editor 
with just the "submit to R" function (and perhaps, a little bit of 
syntax highlighting). However, there are many more complex features that 
one would appreciate when teaching R. There are, I think, three software 
that were developed with teaching in mind, specifically: JGR + Deducer 
(already mentioned), R Commander, and SciViews/Komodo Edit 
(http://www.sciviews.org/SciViews-K). I can speak a little bit about the 
later one.

- It runs the same way on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux,

- Of course, you have code submission + syntax highlighting (much richer 
syntax highlighting than many other lightweight solutions, including 
indication in red of wrong number formatting, or wrong escaped sequence 
in strings), plus:

- A complete object explorer where you can drill in complex objects to 
discover their content. Objects explorers are very important because 
they help "visualize" what's in memory... often a difficult task for 
students in sections where abstraction level is lower (psychology, 
social sciences, biology, versus math, stat or physic, to cite just a few).

- A R reference toolbox that provides easy point&click access to pieces 
of R code through a more familiar paradigm of dialog box (more familiar, 
again, to some categories of students). This is important, I think, and 
is also covered by both R commander and Deducer menus. However, in 
SciViews/Komodo, new items are created easily by selecting a piece of R 
code, right clicking, and choosing ("create snippet") in the contextual 
menu (well, for creating the dialog box, you have to tag parts of that R 
code with something looking like [[%ask:X:default value]], but really 
much, much simpler than programming a plugin in R Commander and 
Decducer. Example: a code for creating a dialog box asking for two 
variables and a color and plotting a scatterplot would look like:

plot([[%ask:x:<x>]] [[%ask:y:<y>]], col = [[%ask:col:1]])

Select that code, right-click, "create snippet",... and you got a dialog 
box prompting for x, y, and col.

- Many other nice features, like completion lists, function calltips, 
contextual help and contextual search R help (place the cursor anywhere 
on a word, and hit Shift-F1, or Ctrl-Shift-F1, and the corresponding R 
help pops up), etc...

According to my experience in teaching to biologists, or biomed 
students, those features are really much more than gadgets to help them 
mastering R and statistical methods.

Final word: I admit that a simpler installer and complete documentation 
of all these features are still lacking for SciViews... but it is 
planned (no sorry, no date yet).

Best,

Philippe Grosjean
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Stuart Wagenius wrote: