Dear R-devel, I have a problem defining the dependencies for a package.
My package (latticist, not yet released) "Suggests" RGtk2, but specifically does not require it. If RGtk2 is available, the user can call a function that builds a GUI with RGtk2. However, I do not want to attach the RGtk2 namespace, because it is irrelevant to the user and exports about 7500 symbols. Last time I asked a similar question to this, Professor Ripley noted that the usual method to get around this situation is the use an explicit package prefix to function calls (the `::` operator). But this is not so easy with non-standard functions. Take this chunk of code: widg <- gtkComboBoxEntryNewText() widg$show() widg["width-request"] <- 100 The first call is easy to prefix, as RGtk2::gtkComboBoxEntryNewText() but the others, `$.RGtkObject` and `[<-.RGtkObject` are not. While I *could* rewrite all the code to use explicit functions, I think, the resulting code would be much less clear. Essentially what I want to do is conditionally import the RGtk2 namespace. Any suggestions? Thanks Felix -- Felix Andrews / 安福立 http://www.neurofractal.org/felix/ 3358 543D AAC6 22C2 D336 80D9 360B 72DD 3E4C F5D8 ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel