[RkWard-devel] 0.4.6+ and beyond: comments and ideas

Sun Feb 18 14:28:15 UTC 2007

Hi,

On Saturday 17 February 2007 00:20, Prasenjit Kapat wrote:
> Generic comments and ideas (I have written plugins for , but have NOT
> committed them to svn yet.

there's a word missing, here ;).

> Should I do them for any/every one to check?) 

you mean, commit them separately, one by one? It does not matter too much, 
really. Some rules of thumb:

- If they're all "the same", and you've already written all of them, commit 
them all in a single bunch.
- If they're all "the same", but you'd like to get some feedback on one 
example, first, commit that, and post a message asking for review (no 
additional message needed in this case; if I see that in the SVN logs, I'll 
make sure to review). After review, commit the rest in a single bunch.
- If they're several "different" plugins, commit them one by one.

Make sure to add them to under_development.pluginmap, first, to make sure 
they'll get some decent testing before release.

> [1] Set/Change default Working directory. May be under Settings > General
> tab. Though this might as well go under, Console. Then change is from
> Workspace menu, using setwd(). Ok, I have written a plugin which seems to
> do the job. But it has some isues:
>
> The <browser> GUI element accepts type="dir" as a field. But, the the
> dialog box DOES NOT accept directories, rather it accepts only files.
> Moreover, the main button is a "Save" button, as opposed to "Open" for
> type="file" field.

Fixed.

> Barring this, if you enter the directory name into the input box then my
> plugin works. But, what would be better is NOT to use a plugin at all.
> Rather hard code it into cpp (like how Open/Save Workspace works now) which
> will be more intuitive. So ideally it would be realised as: Workspace >
> Change Working directory > (Choose the directory using a file open dialog)
> > Open > (Change/Add some message to either the status bar or the Title bar
> of the main RKWard window where the workspace name is displayed. )

I'll add it to the TODO list. The idea about setting the status / title bar is 
nice, but I'll have to add some extra logic to make sure this info stays 
up-to-date, even if the user changes the directory by calling setpwd () 
directly.

> [2] X11 Device export: We need separate plugins for exporting
> postscript/pdf/png/jpeg. Using ghostscript (dev2bitmap) produces low
> quality outputs. I have written a plugin for doing the png/jpeg export. It
> is under Device > Export to PNG/JPEG. Again, it is no where near complete
> but works. I am using dev.print(device=png,...) for this purpose. I am
> planning to add two more plugins for pdf and ps, unless someone else is
> already working on it.

I'm not aware of anybody working on this, ATM. So go ahead!

> [3] CLT: This is one more "set of plugins" on my ToDo:
> Now that preview rocks, I was wondering to add plugins to visualise, the
> approach to Normality under CLT for different distributions. I am planning
> to add it under Distribution > Beta > CLT. Suggestions for any other
> appropriate hierarchy for these plugins and a proper label for the meny
> entry are welcome. Of course, the foremost question is: Though this is
> conceptually nice, whether such a plugin is needed for the current project?

Your guess is a good as mine, here. It's probably not the feature that is most 
urgently needed for most people. However, if you do the work, then you get to 
decide the priorities. On the other hand, if you're desparately looking for 
something to do, and don't have an idea, I'm listing some item, which I feel 
would be valuable in the short term at the end of this mail. Feel free 
to "claim" some of those, or to ignore them.

If you go ahead an add those, one thing we might consider, is whether we'd but 
those plugins in a separate .pluginmap. Then users not needing them could 
easily "unplug" them. No good idea on hierarchy and labelling, right now. 
Fortunately, this would be rather easy to change later on.

> [4] I am sure this is on the TODO:
> Toggle keys for the four tabs (Command Logs, Pending Jobs, R Console, Help
> Search) at the bottom; say F4, F5, F6 and F7 respectively. The current F8
> which is supposed to take the focus away from RConsole, when in RConsole,
> does not seem to work! It just enters a "Enter/Return" character at the
> RConsole prompt.

Yes, window navigation is one of the things I plan on improving for the next 
release. F8 is not supposed to take focus from the console, however. It's 
meant to run the current selection. If the current selection is empty, and 
empty command gets run.

> [5] Remove "Preview" from TODO ?
> 	- Preview of plots
> 		- Maybe use a button (along the submit / close / etc. buttons instead)?
> 		- The preview window should be a specialized RKCaughtWindow
> 			- It should show info on state (up to date / updating / error / etc).

What I meant by these cryptic note is some changes that could perhaps be done 
to the preview. "Maybe use a button" means, maybe there should be a toggle 
button below the "Close" button (or a checkbox at that place), instead of the 
current checkbox. The advantage would be, that for tabbed plugins, the 
preview-functionality would be visible on all tabs, instead of just the one 
it was placed on (typically the first). Not entirely sure on the merits, 
though. After all, this would mean one more button cluttering the UI.

The other note means, that I think it would be better to show the info "up to 
date", "not yet possible", etc. in the preview window itself, instead of 
below the checkbox. Once again, this would make sure, it remains visible, 
even when switching to a different tab. Also, we could use some color coding, 
then (e.g. red for error, yellow for upating, green for up to date) to make 
this info more prominent.

It's not quite trivial to do (though I do have an idea, on how it could be 
implemented), so I wrote it in the TODO list instead of implementing right 
away.

> [6] 	- create grid() plugin
>    I saw this in the current TODO file. What exactly is this grid() plugin?
> Has this anything to do with Trellis grpahics?

Stefan added this, so he's most qualified to comment. I understood it as 
plugin to add a grid to a plot (?grid or ?abline). Would likely be realized 
as an x11 device context plugin to modify an existent plot, but might also be 
a part of plot_options (or both).

> [7] TODO: Implementing the Lattice (based on trellis) packge using menus.
> Lets just keep this as a long term todo, not for immediate concerns. The
> trellis graphics is one hell of a complicated but rather powerfull mess.

Yes, feel free to add it to the TODO list.

Regards
Thomas

----------------------

Some things that I feel would be very useful, while not too hard to implement 
in the short term (if you'd like to work on any of those, please send a short 
note, so there will be no duplication of efforts):

- More help pages on usage of central components (and the applicable 
configuration options):
	- Workspace Browser
	- Script Editor
	- Command Log
	- Data Editor
	- "Plugins" (what they are, selection of .pluginmaps)
- Full support for t.test()s
	- The current test could easily be extended to support paired samples as well 
(rename to "2 sample t test")
	- Single sample t test, i.e. test against constant value (should probably be 
a separate plugin, even though the needed code is very similar)
	- N samples t test (perform pairwise (two sided) tests for N variables)
	- Single var, N samples test (all measurements in a single var, using a 
grouping factor, i.e. stats:::t.test.formula)
- chisq.test
- working plugin for basic anova (this page: 
http://www.personality-project.org/r/r.anova.html might be a useful starting 
point)
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