From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-12-24T05:12:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Fairly elementary UNIX question

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Steckly, Ron wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>  
>>
>> I've been learning a lot about the .NET architecture and scripting to it
>> using Visual Basic and C#.  I'm trying to write a program right now in
>> UNIX and I'm a little perplexed.  How do I tap into events in UNIX?  For
>> example, if I were to write a script to enter a command into the R
>> Statistics Program running in Linux, how would I do that? 
>>
>> Normally, in bash I would type R
>>
>> And a new prompt comes up and you can type whatever command you want.
>>
>> I'd like to be able to make a simple GUi for it so that its easier for
>> people to enter commands who are still learning R.  But I'm not sure how
>> to script to a terminal....
>>
>>  
>>
>> Am I completely on the wrong track?
> 
> Well ... not so much on the wrong track as on the wrong mailing list. :)
> But since I'm an R programmer, I'll give you the R answer. :)
> 
> 1. On *Windows*, there is an excellent GUI/IDE available for the
> language -- the base Windows R installation.
> 
> 2. There is a mailing list devoted to R GUI packages, which is at
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-gui
> 
> 3. In terms of learning R from a GUI, I highly recommend the R Commander
> library. Assuming you want to make this available to other users or you
> have R installed at the system level, become root, start up R and type
> 
>> install.packages("Rcmdr", depend=c("Depends", "Suggests", "Imports"))
> 
> You'll need the Tcl/Tk stuff in R for this to work, so if your R doesn't
> have that, you'll need to rebuild it. Note that the above will also work
> on the Windows R!!
> 
> 4. Now you have R Commander installed. At the R prompt, type
> 
>> library(Rcmdr)
> 
> This brings up the GUI. What's nice about R Commander is that it allows
> you to capture the script and its output from everything you've done. In
> addition, if you drag in all the dependencies, you get some of the more
> convenient functionality like scatterplot matrices, etc., built in.
> 
> I should note that the philosophy of R (and its ancestor S) it that it
> *is* a programming language, and even if you do have a "fancy GUI" like
> SPSS or Minitab, that's only a "crutch" until you learn to program in
> the language.
> 
> Now, if you're an experienced Ruby GUI programmer and want to build your
> own, there's an R - Ruby bridge called "rsruby", which I think is in the
> RubyGems repository. It's a little tricky to install -- some Linux
> distros don't put things in exactly the right place. But once you get it
> installed, a Ruby program can interact with R without all the "shell and
> pipe nonsense". :)
> 
> 
> 

P.S.: I just did this on my system and there's a dependency on
"unixODBC" on a Linux box. On a Windows system, ODBC is already there. :)