Although R doesn't come with a GUI, in the same sense as S-PLUS does, the tcltk package, which is part of the standard R distribution, provides facilities for building GUIs. The Rcmdr package is an example. Although it's not as extensive as the S-PLUS GUI, the Rcmdr package might satisfy the needs of the kinds of users who require a GUI (and it is extensible). I'm close to a new release of the package, which is described at <http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/index.html>, where you can also find the development version.
I hope that this helps, John
At 10:47 AM 12/5/2003 -0600, Marc Schwartz wrote:
On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 10:32, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hello, > > I am not currently using R but I have been using S+ for sevaral years. I > think that I fit in the category of power users, never using the GUI > prefering the flexibility of a command line interface (CLI). In a short > while I will try to move to R, that is if we can convince our IT people > that installing a freeware package on a Unix server will not damaged the > companie's network! The main reasons for which I want to move to R, at > least give it a try, are 1) David Smith of Insightful annonced us a couple > months ago that there is not plan to further develop the 6.0.4 Release 1 > for Sun SPARC, SunOS 5.8, 64-bit version of S+ and as we deal with very > large problems, addressing well over 4GB of memory, a 64 bit version is > required and we bought that Sun machine for this sole purpose. 2) From what > I read and heard R manages its memory a little better than S+ and is a > little faster, non negligeable aspects when dealing with large problems. > > All I said so far has little to do with the title of this email. I am > getting to it. While I am pretty happy with a CLI I was asked to evaluate > a few statistical packages to be used by casual users in my group. One of > the main requirements is ease of use, hence the GUI, furthermore, it will > be a lot easier for me to support them in their analyses if we use the same > software. > > I spent the two last days reading the R-FAQ and searching the R groups mail > archives, including the R-GUI mail group and as a consequence of all this > reading I am a bit confused. At first I gathered that there was no GUI for > R, that R was strickly a CLI language. What brought me to that conclusion > is the fact that on the R-project pages they refer the readers to external > builders of GUIs like the R-Commander of John Fox, Brodgar, TeXmacs, > SciViews etc.. On the other hand searching the mail archives for the word > "R-GUI" yielded well over 500 hits. After reading a few tens of those I > realized that there existed, after building R, an executable called > "Rgui.exe", what is that? is that a GUI version of R or not? can someone > set my bearings straight on that issue? > > Thanks in advance for your valuable comments,
I will defer to others with more experience on your particular platform queries.
Rgui.exe is the Windows 'front end' environment for R that provides a command line console for entering commands to the R interpreter, seeing the textual output of those commands and for displaying the output of plots. It supports a MDI/SDI type of interface. It does have some menus for simple operations (like installing and updating packages) but not for performing analyses. It is Windows OS only.
The default R installation is a CLI interface. If you wish to add a GUI for performing "point and click" analyses, the sources that you list would be appropriate for consideration. If you require a cross-platform GUI for a multi-OS environment, John Fox's RCmdr would be a very good choice since it is built with Tcl/Tk and is not OS specific.
----------------------------------------------------- John Fox Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M4 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 905-525-9140x23604 web: www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/jfox
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