Hmmmm, interesting thread and minds will not be changed but regarding GUIs...I thought S (aka R) was a PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE with a statistical and numerical slant, and not a statistics application. ;O)
Certainly there is an important place for GUIs but I believe that it is very much overemphasized in modern computer culture. My experience and bias--and I started in the 1960's-- is that except for 'trivial' uses, GUIs are a detriment to any reasonably complex CREATIVE computational task. They are adequate for the simple, common task. But even then, typing a command or two is not overly taxing--- particularly when compared to navigating layer upon layer of submenus as is some times needed. If I need to, I will add a little syntactical sugaring when coding and move on. GUIs encourage a passive approach to using computers when solving problems. In addition, it is regretable that a lot of people in the 'workplace' will carry out incomplete and/or incorrect quantitative work because of the real or perceived limitations of the particular (GUI) apps they are using. There is no inclination to go beyond the menu and even then many menu items gather 'electronic dust'. Finally, there are times for many of us when work 'goes home' at the end of the day. That just comes with the territory. I (and most others) can not afford the luxury of S-plus, Statistica, SPSS, etc. at home. So in a sense there is a very real 'loss of productivity' cost associated with using commercial software. Now that does bring us around to supporting R doesn't it? (Mea culpa. And I resolve to do better!) What value does one put on the vitality of the R community? Best regards, Michael Grant, Ph.D. * The requirements for creating packages are on target, and have the desired impact on both the quality and breadth of R. --- Philippe Grosjean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > > In the latest 'Scientific Computing World' magazine > (issue 78, p. 22), there > is a review on free statistical software by Felix > Grant ...2.) ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html