I'm a bit puzzled about the X11-related statements here. Both mentioned "better X11 support" - what is really missing in Apple's X11? So far I have found Apple's X11 very enjoyable for all scientific purposes and much easier to work with that other 3rd-party X11 implementations.
As for installing X11, yes, I would welcome if it was in included the standard install mode, but it is in no way hidden: all Mac OS X installation DVDs have it and you only have to start the Mac OS X installer - one double-click, that's all. (Besides, rumor has it that this may change for Leopard anyway.) For a class, why not just supply the package? Concerning R itself, my only worry (and a big headache) is the lack of Fortran support in Xcode. We have to install parallel compilers and system libraries which is a maintenance nightmare... Cheers, Simon On Mar 21, 2007, at 10:55 AM, Dan Putler wrote: > Hi, > > Let me second Joerg van den Hoff's call for better X11 support. I'm > using R via a modified version of the R Commander GUI (that uses the > tcltk package, which requires X11 on the OS X platform) in a couple > of different classes. One thing that I found frustrating is that > Apple seems to be going to greater lengths overtime to hide the > X11user.pkg. This makes installing R on OS X seem really complicated > to students. The installation of the course software is comparatively > much more straightforward on the Windows side, leaving the > unfortunate impression that Windows is more suited to statistical > computing. > > Dan > > On 21-Mar-07, at 4:49 AM, Joerg van den Hoff wrote: > >> On Tue, Mar 20, 2007 at 07:37:14PM -0400, Geoffrey Hutchison wrote: >>> >>> Hello fellow R users! >>> >>> I'm currently serving as a committee member at MacResearch.org, a >>> website devoted to science, math, and statistics on Macs. In about >>> two weeks, we'll be visiting Apple to talk about issues, needs, >>> desires of science users and developers: >>> http://www.macresearch.org/ >>> macresearch_science_related_requests_for_apple >>> >>> So I was writing to ask if you have particular questions or concerns >>> which I can proxy? I think this is particularly important, since >>> none >>> of the other MacResearch representatives are statistics folks. >>> (I'm a >>> chemist -- I'm a happy user of R for data exploration and analysis.) >>> >>> For example, are all the R.app compiler problems solved? Do we need >>> graphing/plotting libraries for visualization from Apple? What >>> feedback can I pass along? >>> >>> Many thanks, >>> -Geoff >> >> hello, >> >> I don't have a R- specific issue. what I _can_ say is, that for >> Macs to be >> accepted in scientific environments it's mandatory, that the bare >> bones UNIX >> side of OSX, notably full screen X11 is working competitivly to, >> say, LINUX or >> FreeBSD machines. for scientific purposes I find the combination of >> some Aqua >> apps and many X11 apps and UNIX utilities especially helpful and >> superior to >> using anything else. >> >> right now X11 is OK (but not optimal), but I don't know, how the >> future support >> for that area will look like. >> >> so if you could transport the message, that many many tools require >> X11 and >> many scientists are UNIX 'addicts', this might help (although they >> sshould know). >> >> what I have noted is, that e.g. manpage support is no good: it >> seems that >> quite a few of them are out of sync with the actual state of affairs. >> >> one specific wish would be a 'canonical' rsync supporting HFS+ >> stuff, such >> as aliases, too. (they did it with `cp', for instance). same for >> other UNIX >> utilities which copy data (dd, tar, ...). >> >> joerg >> >> _______________________________________________ >> R-SIG-Mac mailing list >> R-SIG-Mac@stat.math.ethz.ch >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac > > _______________________________________________ > R-SIG-Mac mailing list > R-SIG-Mac@stat.math.ethz.ch > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac > > _______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list R-SIG-Mac@stat.math.ethz.ch https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
