[RkWard-devel] RKWard 0.2.8

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi all,

Another release of RKWard is out, and while of course it's still far from "the 
real thing", some more important pieces have joined the puzzle. On the 
visible side the most important new features are:
   - Auto-addition of rows and columns in the table-editor. There is a 
trailing (grayes out) column/row at the right/bottom of the table. If you 
start typing into it, a new column/row is added automatically.
   - The R-Console behaves some more like a regular R-session, in that it now 
prints out "visible" results, without the need to specifiy "print (...)" 
explicity. The behavior is not exactly like in a regular session, yet, but 
close to it in most cases.
   - A new dialog was added for package/library management. You can 
load/unload packages, fetch updates and new packages from CRAN.
   - This dialog is also invoked, if a require ()-command fails, allowing you 
to try and install the missing library.

On the technical side, esp. the last feature is interesting, in that it shows 
off the new channel of communication from the R-backend to RKWard. Now 
commands/request can be sent from the backend to RKWard - and RKWard may in 
return run further commands in the backend. Future uses for this will include 
invoking plugins from the R-console etc.
Another small but important bit is that commands can now be cancelled. This 
feature is not really integrated into the GUI, yet, but in some places like 
cancelling a download from CRAN, it's already fulfilling an important 
function.

The most important plan for the next release is to make the table yet more 
usable. Especially the type-select cells (second row in the information-view) 
are quite a pain to use.

Well, please try out the new release. Since I've been messing quite a bit with 
R-internals, I'm interested in finding out, whether RKWard runs as expected 
on all systems. But - as always - all feedback is welcome.

Thomas