On 11/10/2006 11:22 AM, Carlos GUERRA wrote: > Dear friends, > > I’m thinking about buying a MacBook Pro and I wanted to know if anyone can > tell me what are the major changes, in “R”, between a Mac, and a Windows.
As others have said, R is pretty similar. I'm mainly a Windows user, but I have an Intel MacBook, and I like R on it better than Windows in the following ways: - The editor in R is nicer, with syntax highlighting, syntax hints, etc. - If you can figure out how to get it going, the XCode debugger is a nicer source-level debugger for C code in R or R packages than what's available for gcc code in Windows. (It feels like a professional debugger, such as you'd get with Microsoft or Borland software, but those don't support gcc. Insight in Windows feels like a kludge.) - The console is smarter about offering you previously entered commands rather than previously entered lines, when you scroll up. Things I don't like: - It's a major PITA to figure out how to get XCode working when you're not doing all your development within it. I think there's a bigger GNU community in Windows development than in Mac development, so it's easier to get help. - The console scroll-back sometimes turns into cursor movement instead. - There are two incompatible graphics systems available, so packages like rgl only work half the time: either as X11 packages, or as (Aqua/Carbon/whatever they call the nice looking graphics). I'd love to know how to compile it so that it used whichever graphics was present at run-time, but so far that looks quite hard. - Subversion has better integration (TortoiseSVN) in Windows than on the Mac. In fact, there isn't even a binary of version 1.4.x of Subversion available for download yet, two months after release. But if you're set up for compiling R, compiling svn isn't a big deal, and if you're not set up for compiling R, you may have no need for Subversion, so this isn't much of a problem. And some irritants that may or may not be relevant: - The Macbook case has a very sharp edge, which makes my hands quite sore if I rest them on it as I'm typing. Old Macbook Pros don't have this problem; hopefully new ones won't either. - I know Windows tools better so I'm still more comfortable there. I think there is no Mac equivalent of TortoiseSVN or Beyond Compare (a graphical diff utility, quite a bit better than what I've found for the Mac so far). Duncan Murdoch > > Thanks for all > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > > Carlos GUERRA > > > > Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo > > Escola Superior Agrária de Ponte de Lima > > > > Mosteiro de Refóios do Lima > > 4990-706 Ponte de Lima > > PORTUGAL > > > > MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > TEL: +351 912 407 109 > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > R-SIG-Mac mailing list > [email protected] > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac _______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list [email protected] https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
