[rkward-devel] [JSS-Announce] Special issue on GUI's for R

Fri Jul 2 14:50:28 UTC 2010

Hi list,

first of all I did not come as far as I wanted. Moreover my provider has technical issues. Thus I can not use svn.

However, I think we will get a very interesting story. I please you to have a look into the document till Friday next week (or give me feedback how long you need). Please use the change tracking tool of OOo ("Edit/Changes/Record").

Figures are mostly place holders but should give a good impression of what will be there at the end.
I had some troubles in first place to come up with empirical data (strange for somebody in medical/natural science) which describe the GUI development. Finally I came up with the idea to include metrics (download number, Google hits, LOC development, internationalization and such) used in other research fields. This will distinguish us from other papers in this field but will also help to understand why RKWard is where it is and what it is. Thinks like exact menu structure are not so important in my opinion (may find a home in the appendix). I have also some other things in mind (in especial usability metrics, form factor) but I need to gain some knowledge (reviewing literature, talk with an expert).
Content wise I wrote down some thoughts, took information from the mailing list or the RKWard wiki (hope this is okay). I have also found a bunch of literature (something like 20 citations ("lit_02072010.html") right now) from peer-reviewed articles and other documents (books, abstracts, …). We certainly can cite more.
How to install RKWard exactly is not so important in my opinion. This should be rather short, since there is a wiki, packages of different distros and the read me.

Thinks I would like to see:
Meik: You did a work shop with RKWard. Maybe this would be a good story for a "use case scenario". Right now there are some places in the document (results output for example) which illustrate use cases. More in other places would be better.

Thomas: The technical part will be the most interesting. I guess you see which parts in the document I mean. Figures can describe more than words. If you could update some diagrams (RKWard structure with PHP or JS backend, …). In any case I need support here. I suggest that I or somebody else writes a condensed version of the GUI plug-in development with focus on JavaScript/R and example pictures. I consider this to be a core feature of RKWard. Why C++/Qt/KDE SC and not Gtk, Tlc/Tk, …needs also some backing (see troubles and focus of paper)?

The chapter "Structure of RKWard - Technical Design Overview" and "Programmer’s Niche – Extending RKWard" are certainly very, if not most, important. Best would be to satisfy many parties (the one who wants to know how it works, and the other who wants to know how to code a GUI plug-in).

A short/compact comparison with "competitive" products (Cantor, Rcmdr, tinn-r, statistiklabor,…, JGR) is a must in my opinion. While writing the paper I came to the impression that RKWard combines the best from all the other products (with some disadvantages like large dependencies compared to Rcmdr, …) and was wondering why is not everybody using it. :) We can emulate features like Cantors Worksheet Interface to some extend, do automatic report gerneration like RreportGenerator, have a rather powerful IDE and so on. I think you get the point.

Before I forget. The graphic window for plots is just great. It should get its own section. Preview of plots and export to what ever was never easier in R. I know of no other GUI which does it as comprehensive as RKWard. Am I wrong?

All: If you know of (empirical) data sources or literature which support this paper, please let me know.

One thing I still have trouble with is the overall statement of the paper. Currently it is just a description of RKWard. But it mustn't end here. The editors asked for papers which discuss GUIs in statistics and R (that where we make currently no comprehensive point), implement toolboxes (that's where we fit well), GUIs for the desktop or cloud (that's where we fit good) and other features R should have (that where we currently make no point). But we will get there.

No need to mention all is open for discussion.

Regards
Stefan
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