A couple of non-flame comments and a question - (1) I have used Smalltalk in various forms and recommend it highly as an environment (try Squeak for a free implementation); it is the origin of the model-view-controller paradigm for interaction with a GUI. Tcl/Tk is also nice with its event-driven model.
(2) DON'T keep re-implementing the same statistical algorithms all over the place! Putting together software that can be trusted is non-trivial - if you want to add to the available resources I applaud you for it, but ADDing is not simply translating to another language (though, if the "old" language is no longer available or supported there are good reasons to do so. :-) I use a package to accomplish something and I need to trust the output from that package. I don't look for a "swiss army knife" but rather a package that does what I need and does it well (though I prefer packages that have more functionality). (3) I like R because of the model which returns results in "objects" (though, as a Smalltalker, I don't see much OO in the language - maybe I missed something). (4) AI seemed to make more demonstrable progress when they started separting the reasoning mechanism from the rules and data (as in the old "expert systems"). And the question: Is there a "simple" way (e.g. some socket based mechanism) to feed commands into R and retrieve the results of those commands? This would require that I program the sequence of commands I want to use (or a means to generate them) and then be able parse the resulting structure - I understand. But it would also allow separation of the computation, the "statistical reasoning", and the UI into (potentially) separate units which would not even need to be on the same machine to inter-operate. If there is a reasonable way to do this, please tell me. Thanks. Walter Johnston ---- On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, Jeffrey J. Hallman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > If you're looking for a GUI toolkit that: > > 1. Is cross-platform, > 2. Has a good collection of widgets that look good on all platforms, and > 3. Is easy to work with from R > > then it is hopeless. There is no such toolkit. > > As one poster mentioned, most of the better GUI toolkits are very > object-oriented, because that paradigm is a good fit for GUI programming. > There are a few programming environments out there that do have nice GUI > abilities, but they all use base languages that are not very R-like, and so > the potential R GUI programmer is faced with having to use two very different > languages for his creation. And even if that obstacle is surmounted, there > remains the difficulty of trying to package up his work in such a way as to > make it easily installed by others. Things are always breaking in the > interfaces between R and whatever you're using. Trying to keep it all running > and packaging it for deployment are thankless, gargantuan tasks. > > There is a better way, and that is to give up on R. Start over with > a better programming environment, one that is object oriented, as flexible and > dynamic as R, is cross platform, easy to program in, and has decent GUI > facilities already. Then port the stuff in R that does statistical > programming, and you have the best of all worlds. > > The environment I am thinking about is VisualWorks Smalltalk, which is free > for noncommercial use. As a language, Smalltalk is both simpler and more > powerful than R, and the VM it runs on is much faster than the R interpreter. > It has superior garbage collection and the best IDE in the business. > Callouts to C are just as easy as they are in R, but would likely not be > needed as often due to the faster VM and much better programming facilities. > Interfaces to various databases are possible, and the most powerful web > toolkit (Seaside) is written in Smalltalk and runs under VisualWorks. > > There are a couple of other Smalltalk environments around that could also be > considered. Squeak is an open source cross-platform Smalltalk that is not as > fast as VisualWorks, but still must faster and more robust than the R > interpreter. Smalltalk/X is another possibility, though it works only on > Windows and Unix. > > Think about it. Once you have a basic math package that can handle matrix > programming and various mathematical functions, building the various > statistical modeling tools on top of them is not that hard. What makes S and > R so much better than SAS is their programmability. Smalltalk is like that, > only better. > > > Jeff Hallman > > _______________________________________________ > R-SIG-GUI mailing list > R-SIG-GUI@stat.math.ethz.ch > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-gui > > _______________________________________________ R-SIG-GUI mailing list R-SIG-GUI@stat.math.ethz.ch https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-gui
