On 1/1/2006 8:47 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote: > This is my New Year wishlist for R features. One > common thread is that I find I sometimes use languages > other than R including javascript, Windows batch and > gawk. Others have mentioned other languages too. It > would be nice if, in those cases I could use R > simplifying development into a single environment > (viz. R). > > The following are not in any order. > > 1. Self Contained Executables > > Make it possible to create self contained R > executables. Something like tcl starkits > http://www.equi4.com/starkit.html > or Python py2exe > http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe > is what I am thinking of. Its ok if they > are interpreted as long as its all transparent.
How self-contained? It would be relatively easy to create small executables that could make use of the DLLs in R_HOME. But that's probably not useful if better support for your next suggestion was there. If you want something that would run on a machine with no R installed, that probably involves changing the linking scheme (at least in Windows), and would not be so simple. > 2. R as a Filter > > Support using R as a filter analogously to > awk/gawk. e.g. > > echo a x 3 | R -f myprog.R | findstr /i answer > echo a x 3 | R -e "chartr('x', 'X', readLines(STDIN()))" | findstr /i X > > This would allow replacement of certain awk/gawk > filters with R. In the above STDIN or some > would refer to the echo output, not to further > input from the script. I think /dev/stdin > can already be used in UNIX but not in Windows. > > 3. Microsoft Active Scripting Language > > Make R into a Microsoft Active Scripting > language. Nearly every other major scripting > language including perl, python, ruby, tcl, > oorexx, vbscript, jscript and others have > Microsoft Active Scripting support. This would > allow R to be used like javascript in HTML files > in Microsoft environments and also in any other > software that supports Microsoft's active > scripting interface. R is not designed to be secure. I think this would be a very risky thing to do. > > 4. Extend Clipboard Support to Non-Text Objects on > Windows > > If one selects and copies a table in Internet > Explorer (IE) one can then paste it into Excel and > it comes out as expected with one Excel cell per > IE table cell. However, R does not currently > support this level of integration. (Current > workaround is to paste it into Excel and then copy > it back out of Excel. Excel will add tabs to the > text that is so copied.) > > I understand that this feature may be in R 2.3.0 > but am mentioning it for completeness. Yes, I wrote some functions to do some of this, but I haven't committed them to the trunk. I didn't like the user interface much: using clipboard support depends heavily on being able to handle the various clipboard format constants (CF_BITMAP, etc.), and R doesn't handle constants well. I'll take another look at them and see if I get any inspiration on how to make them palatable. > 5. Handhelds > > Version(s) of R for handheld computers such as > Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, etc. > UNIX-based handhelds would likely be simplest > but the others would likely be useful to a wider > audience. All this needs is someone who wants to gather/create the tools and start building the binaries. > 6. Issue Tracking in Packages > > Standard method of tracking issues in CRAN > packages. Provide svn and Trac support or > equivalent to CRAN package authors or at least > have a common change log mechanism. There is > currently no uniform way of finding out what has > changed in a package. > > 7. system > > The arguments of "system(...)" should be extended > in various operating systems so that a consistent > set is available across them. Right now it works > differently under Windows and UNIX. > > 8. Extend Grid to Base Graphics > > Rework base graphics so that they use grid > graphics underneath to the extent possible or else > leave them as is but have a version or package > that emulate them using grid graphics. This sounds like the gridBase package. > 9. Eliminate Perl > > Get rid of all use of perl within R. The parts > of R that use perl have not changed much probably > because its too onerous to have to deal with a > complex multilanguage setup. Eliminating perl might > speed up improvements in those areas. This mostly > affects the package buildin gprocess which could > then be rehosted within R as a package building > package. > 10. Event Loop > > Add an event loop mechanism to facilitate GUI > programming in R and also to facilitate the development > of facilities to allow higher levels of interaction > within grid graphics. There is such a thing now: see the Writing R Extensions manual. It still needs work, but people using it and suggesting improvements will help. Duncan Murdoch ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel