[kde-edu]: Inviting the RKWard team to KDE

[Alexander Rieder]

On Wednesday 25 August 2010 10:00:16 Thomas Thym wrote:
> 2010/8/25 Aleix Pol <aleixpol at kde.org>:
> > On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 11:10 PM, Thomas Thym <ungethym at mevin.net> wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >> 
> >> although Cantor has some R capabilities, too, RKWard is a very nice
> >> (and imho more mature) app. RKWard is based on KDElibs.
> >> A couple of days ago the idea to invite the RKWard team to KDE was
> >> mentioned on the promo list. We think we could both gain from that.
> >> But that's non of our (promo) business.
> >> 
> >> So what do you think?
> >> 
> >> Cheers,
> >> Thomas
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> kde-edu mailing list
> >> kde-edu at mail.kde.org
> >> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-edu
> 
> Hi Aleix,
> 
> thanks for your quick response.
> 
> > I'm speaking from the ignorance, but some questions come up.
> 
>  I try to answer your reasonable questions.
> 
> > What do RKWard developer(s) think?
> > Would RKWard developers willing to integrate into cantor at some point in
> > the future?
> 
> I have no idea what the RKWard developers think or if they want to
> integrate. I have not contacted them yet because I first wanted to
> hear you opinion. If it is in your interest I will be pleased to
> contact them and ask them about their opinion.
> 
> > What does RKWard do that Cantor doesn't? Is it really the same
> > application?
> 
> RKWard is an Data Analysis Tool doing only statistics with R (no
> mathematics). I use it for the analysis of thousands of my datasets
> (regression, correlation, ...). You can easily import your data, do
> your analysis of plots via menus. You don't have to "program" R (but
> of cause you could). There are many tutorials out there and from a
> google search I know that it is used in some universities.
> http://rkward.sourceforge.net/
> 
> I (rarely) use Cantor and if, then for mathematical functions. I have
> to admit that I could integrate Maxima (and KAlgebra) into Cantor but
> could NOT manage to integrate R. So I don't know the R capabilities of
> Cantor.
> 
> Imho RKWard would enrich our application portfolio and helps us to
> present a more complete application set to our users. RKWard could
> profit from our popularity and visibility and could join a fantastic
> community.
> 
> Shall I ask the RKWard devels what they think? Would one of the
> developers or the module maintainer ask? Or do we want to focus on
> Cantor only (and git migration, and, and, and all the other tasks)?
> 
> Cheers,
> Thomas
> 
> > Aleix


Hi,
I don't think that RKWard could ever replace Cantor (or vice versa), they have
IMHO a very different UI philosophy. While Cantor focuses on providing the same 
interface for a wide range of different math applications, and therefore 
focusses on a nicer way to code with the different languages in an interactive 
way, I see RKWard more  as a tool for doing statistics, that just happens to 
use R (even if it does expose the language if wanted), but the ui tries to 
hide it as much as possible.

So I'd vote for inviting RKWard to join the KDE community. Maybe that even 
enables some more cooperation/code sharing between the Cantor R backend and 
RKWard

regards,
Alexander