[RkWard-devel] Questions

[steven.j.novick at gsk.com]

Hi all,

        I am both a Linux and Windows R user.  At work, I can only use 
Windows.  How much of RKWard is generalizable so that it can work on 
multiple platforms?  For example, if R is linked to an office suite for 
producing output, it might be wiser to link it to OpenOffice instead of 
KOffice.

Steve

Steven Novick, Ph.D.
Principal Statistician
GlaxoSmithKline
email:  steven.j.novick at gsk.com
telephone: 919-483-2702
MAI.T0201



"Thomas Friedrichsmeier" <thomas.friedrichsmeier at ruhr-uni-bochum.de> 
Sent by: rkward-devel-admin at lists.sourceforge.net
02-Aug-2004 15:41
 
To
rkward-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
cc

Subject
Re: [RkWard-devel] Questions






Hi!

> I just had a look at Rkward and it seems very promising.  I just have a
> couple of (probably very stupid) questions:
> 1) Why a php backend instead of a more "traditional" scripting language
> like python? There are a couple of python packages that can call R 
directly
> and manage R objects as if they were python objects. This question is 
not
> here to start a language war, but just out of curiosity.

Well, to a certain degree that decision is certainly related to my 
personal 
likes/dislikes. The reasons for using PHP are:
                 - fairly well known and stable (applies to python as 
well)
                 - lots of functionality esp. with respect to 
string-processing (probably 
applies to python as well)
                 - it's a templating language, i.e. you can write plain 
R-code (or HTML in the 
output section) and only fill in the code in the changing sections
In the current design, PHP does not interface with R directly. Rather, the 

RKWard application is in charge of both and manages requests from both 
backends (actually, the R-backend can not yet do any requests, but in the 
future it should be possible e.g. to start a plugin from the R-console). 
Hence it is not necessary for PHP to access R directly. In fact, it might 
even raise some problems regarding threading/the proper order of execution 
of 
R-commands.
Of course all this is open to discussion.

> 2) As to the syntax highlighting problem mentioned on the home page, 
what
> about katepart? I think it already has R syntax highlighting.

The homepage has not been updated for more than a year (I had not worked 
on 
RKWard during that time). But in fact, I simply had not yet thought of 
that. 
This way implementing syntax highlighting will in fact be about as easy as 
it 
gets. Thanks for the hint.

Thomas


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by OSTG. Have you noticed the changes on
Linux.com, ITManagersJournal and NewsForge in the past few weeks? Now,
one more big change to announce. We are now OSTG- Open Source Technology
Group. Come see the changes on the new OSTG site. www.ostg.com
_______________________________________________
RKWard-devel mailing list
RKWard-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rkward-devel


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/rkward-devel/attachments/20040803/d74f87b3/attachment.html>