- Rather than just CRAN and BIOC, you have a character vector of repositories. There is a function setRepositories() to set the appropriate option().
- There is no default CRAN, but a function chooseCRANmirror() to set a mirror, which is invoked if you try to access CRAN without setting a mirror.
- update.packages(ask="graphics") brings up a listbox for you to de-select packages (all available updates are pre-selected).
- install.packages() with no/empty pkgs argument brings up a listbox of all available packages (including those inside bundles).
- menu(graphics=TRUE) is implemented.
These can be set up to use widgets where available (Windows, if Tk is available under X11, I hope Aqua before release), and have a text-mode fallback (better than the current menu(), but in that spirit). (Except that is install.packages: text-mode selection from 480 packages even in three columns is not useful to me, but a scrolling list works well as Windows users of R already know.)
My question is:
What should be default be?
Options might be:
- use the graphics widget if available.
- make the graphics the default on Windows (it will always be available, but not necessarily on the right screen under DCOM uses).
- make text-mode the default on Unix.
- do different things for different tools. Currently setRepositories() and chooseCRANmirror() default to graphics-if-possible, and update.packages() defaults to text mode (which gives more detailed information).
I am not really in favour of making the defaults a set of options, but that is possible.
This is a request for input on what would be a good compromise for general R users (and not just the R-devel audience).
-- Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
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