[rkward-devel] A confusing problem for newbies...

[Aaron Batty]

Hi folks.

I just taught an IRT workshop on Sunday using ltm via RKWard, and I had a
lot of people claim that they couldn't get ltm and the dependencies to
download. This was a familiar problem from when I taught a semester-long
basic stats class with RKWard. This time, though, I was able to sit down
with the people and figure out what was going wrong.

It seems that after you pick a CRAN mirror, and RKWard/R finds the
necessary package, if you click "OK" instead of "Apply," it still closes
out the window, but doesn't download the package. The analysis you're
trying to do fails, of course, and you can't figure out why. You click "Run
Again," but it all happens again.

I had to sit down with at least 5 people, go to the package management
screen, search for ltm, then hit "Apply" and *then* "OK." In all cases,
everything worked great then.

Now, after many years of using Windows, I know that if there's an "Apply"
button, you'd better press it before "OK", but this was especially
confusing for the Mac users, especially since the "Apply" button is way
over on the left edge of the window, contrary to the UI conventions on the
Mac, which put the most likely, default button on the right, where it's
easy (for right-handed people) to get to.

There was at least one Windows user who was having the same problem.

Can't the "OK" button apply the change and then close?
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