Byron Ellis wrote: > [...] > Contrary to popular belief the speed of R's interpreter is rarely the > limiting factor to R's speed. People treating R like C is typically > the limiting factor. You have vector operations, USE THEM.
Hey! I vote for a 'fortune' here! > [...] Otherwise, the discussion is taking a bad turn again (did someone suggested to trow away R, and rewrite it completelly?). So, here a couple of "rules" we should consider: 1) We love R, and we are really convinced that it is a nice statistical environment and a good statistical programming tool. 2) We want to build a GUI *around an existing software developped as a CLI*. As such, we know it is not straigthforward. We have to find workarounds for bad R behaviours (that happen because it was *not* conceived with a GUI in mind). We should just suggest a limited amount of changes, when really needed, remembering a GUI is not a priority in R development. 3) The S language is a strong force in R. Don't try to hide it under more sexy dialog boxes or other kinds of GUIs: expose R code (for instance, show R code constructed after selections done in that dialog box)... and give an opportunity to edit and reexecute that code to stimulate first experiments with the S language. 4) What is the language that is working an all platforms R runs, is perfectly compatible with R, and is always available once R is installed? Well, R itself (i.e., the S language), of course! So, to make sure your GUI code is most usable by the R community, write as much GUI code as you can in S language... and if you think you can write everything in you XXX language, think again, and you will realize that a large part of that code can actually be written directly in R as well. 5) There are new and better graphical widgets and languages appearing regularly in the computer world. The best ones for making a GUI today may be obsolete rapidly in the future. On the contrary, we all hope a longer life for R. Thus, write your GUI code in R as much as possible in a way it is independent from a particular GUI toolkit and interfacing language. I say, as much as possible, because this is a very diffcult task, given the specificities of each toolkit and language. 6) Write your code with reusability in mind; Reusability in your own GUI, but also, for sharing code between GUI projects. Remember writing a GUI for R is a very long and complex task, and you can hardly do it alone. Working all together, sharing code and ideas, would greatly improve our output. I think if you disagree with these "rules", you'r wasting your time. You are then better to log off from R-SIG-GUI, even uninstall R if you are so angry,... and enjoy life instead of wasting time fighting against the $%*£&#! behaviour of R in your GUI. Best, Philippe Grosjean ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
