On 02/07/2009 5:10 AM, Warren Young wrote:
Michael wrote:
I saw my friend has a R Console window which has automatic syntax
reminder when he types in the first a few letters of R command. And
he's using R under MAC. Is that a MAC thing, or I could do the same on
my PC Windows?

Yes, the Mac GUI for R is a lot nicer than the Windows version. I guess it's just a matter of what interested the people who wrote each, as there's no technical reason it has to be that way. Maybe someone will port some of the Mac GUI's features over to the Windows version.

The Windows GUI was written before the Mac GUI, and was written using a fairly strange toolkit, which are two reasons the Mac looks prettier. But the Windows GUI has a few advantages over the Mac:

You can copy from the console, prompts and all, and paste just the commands, to re-execute a sequence of commands.

The cursor won't move to places where input isn't allowed, so the up- and down-arrow keys operate more consistently.

 The history() command is more sensible by default.

Installing packages defaults to installing dependencies, and the menu layout for doing a local install makes more sense to me.


The syntax hints in the Mac GUI would be nice, as would a number of other features there. (The Windows GUI does have syntax completion using TAB, but not the hints.) But the Windows GUI is not so bad.

Duncan Murdoch

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