Quoting Scionforbai <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I just wonder: why should R and its community try to support such an > awful program, with its protected formats and unmantained > features/bugs? > I mean, from both philosophical and technical point of view: R is free > software and should rather try to be 'viral' than to compete. It > already has the strength, in my humble opinion. > > You want to use excel: go and use, you payed for it, so you have a > commercial support elsewhere. You are not able to communicate with > other applications? That's the fault of excel, not of R, which is free > software and uses well documented formats.
It would be dumb to ignore the fact that Excel is a very widespread program, and therefore in the real world we are very likely to encounter data formatted by Excel. I use R as a means to an end, as a tool to solve real world problems, not out of a religious idealism. Jose -- Dr. Jose I. de las Heras Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology Phone: +44 (0)131 6513374 Institute for Cell & Molecular Biology Fax: +44 (0)131 6507360 Swann Building, Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh Edinburgh EH9 3JR UK -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.