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

[meik michalke]

hi stefan,

am Freitag 02 Juli 2010 (16:50) schrieb Stefan Rödiger:
> first of all I did not come as far as I wanted.

that's a humble understatement, right? ;-) to say the least, your document is 
much more elaborated than i expected!

> 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.

i think this is interesting to know and worth documenting, but i must say i 
agree with thomas that RKWards popularity is not a topic the paper would 
*absolutely* need, if we ran into space problems.

personally, from the perspective of a reader, i'd prefer a rather compact 
paper concentrating on the really important information over a longer one that 
might lose its scope a little. shorter articles are more likely to be read by 
even vaguely interested people, and you can always find out more if it got 
your attention. if i was the reader, i'd expect mostly to be shown what the 
software can actually do for me, to see if it's interesting enough to download 
and install it.

while i was reading i thought, one dimension to look at could be "things 
RKWard did in the past", "can do already" and "is planned for a future 
release". for instance, we could reduce RKWards former dependency on PHP to a 
footnote, restrict all mentioning of future ideas (and problems) to the 
discussion section and focus mainly the things RKWard does as of now.

given that the issue has its scope on GUIs for R, i'd assume that the editors 
will introduce the topic themselves, so we could trim down the history a 
little as well.

i too believe that menu structures and installation are not so important here.

that said, i'd rearrange the paper a little, so we wouldn't actually lose any 
of the main topics you already included (which give a comprehensive overview):
- start with a short introduction how and why RKWard came into being
- show its core components (data editor, R cosole...)
- core functionalities & features (data import, package management, graphics
  window...)
- technical background & plug-in architecture
- comparison with other GUIs (could be a tabular)
- discussion (incl. future plans)
- appendix

> 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.

sure i can come up with something, but i wouldn't go into much detail. but 
you're right, RKWard can be really helpful in teaching scenarios -- once it's 
installed, configured and understood ;-)

> One thing I still have trouble with is the overall statement of the paper.
> Currently it is just a description of RKWard.

well, i wouldn't say "just". we are all used to it so we're not confused by a 
workspace browser, R console and tabs with data management, results, help 
pages and script editors (and we're not yet speaking of the wonders behind the 
menu bar). but if you're new to RKWard -- which will go for most readers of 
the paper --, this can be quite puzzling. at least that's what a got from my 
use case scenario ;-) i believe, if we just manage to show RKWard as it is, it 
will definitely speak for itself :-)

you asked yourself why not everyone uses RKWard. probably it's the need to 
understand it first. therefore i'm sure it's worthwile to keep this 
understanding as the overall statement.

what do you think?


viele grüße :: m.eik

-- 
dipl. psych. meik michalke
institut f"ur experimentelle psychologie
abt. f"ur diagnostik und differentielle psychologie
heinrich-heine-universit"at 40225 d"usseldorf
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