[rkward-cvs] SF.net SVN: rkward:[3239] branches/jss_dec_10/FINAL_JSS_TEX/RKWard_paper. tex

Wed Dec 15 19:29:12 UTC 2010

Revision: 3239
          http://rkward.svn.sourceforge.net/rkward/?rev=3239&view=rev
Author:   tfry
Date:     2010-12-15 19:29:11 +0000 (Wed, 15 Dec 2010)

Log Message:
-----------
Convert first section to get a feel how it works.

Modified Paths:
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    branches/jss_dec_10/FINAL_JSS_TEX/RKWard_paper.tex

Modified: branches/jss_dec_10/FINAL_JSS_TEX/RKWard_paper.tex
===================================================================

--- branches/jss_dec_10/FINAL_JSS_TEX/RKWard_paper.tex	2010-12-15 18:26:47 UTC (rev 3238)
+++ branches/jss_dec_10/FINAL_JSS_TEX/RKWard_paper.tex	2010-12-15 19:29:11 UTC (rev 3239)
@@ -8,11 +8,11 @@
 	\And Prasenjit Kapat\\Plus Affiliation
 	\And Meik Michalke\\Plus Affiliation
 	\And Thomas Friedrichsmeier\\Ruhr-University Bochum}
-\title{RKWard - A comprehensive Graphical User Interface and Integrated Development Environment for statistical analysis with {R}}
+\title{RKWard - A Comprehensive Graphical User Interface and Integrated Development Environment for Statistical Analysis With {R}}
 
 %% for pretty printing and a nice hypersummary also set:
 \Plainauthor{Stefan R\"odiger, Prasenjit Kapat, Meik Michalke, Thomas Friedrichsmeier} %% comma-separated
-\Plaintitle{RKWard - A comprehensive Graphical User Interface and Integrated Development Environment for statistical analysis with R} %% without formatting
+\Plaintitle{RKWard - A Comprehensive Graphical User Interface and Integrated Development Environment for Statistical Analysis With R} %% without formatting
 \Shorttitle{RKWard a GUI to {R}} %% a short title (if necessary)
 
 %% an abstract and keywords
@@ -104,7 +104,78 @@
 Markup Language
 
 \section[Background and motivation]{Background and motivation}
-In mid 1993 Ihaka and Gentleman published initial efforts on the ~\cite{Kuhn2006}, ~\cite{Fox2008}, ~\cite{Zhang2004}, ~\cite{RDCT2004}
+In mid 1993 Ihaka and Gentleman published initial efforts on the computing
+language and programming environment R on the s-news mailing list. Ambitions for
+this project aimed to develop an S-like language but without inheriting memory
+and performance issues. The source code of R was finally released in 1995 and
+development has since evolved under the umbrella of the R Development Core Team
+since mid 1997 (\cite {RDCT2001}, \cite{RDCT2010}; \cite{Ihaka_Gentlemen_1993}).
+R does not include an advanced cross-platform GUI as known from other
+statistical software packages. However, R includes tools for building GUIs
+mainly based on Tlc/Tk (\cite{Dalgaard2001}, \cite{Dalgaard2002}). Since then a
+plethora of R GUIs have emerged (see \url{http://www.sciviews.org/_rgui/} for a
+comprehensive list). In 2005 John Fox released version 1.0 of R Commander which
+can be considered a milestone in R GUI development; this was the first GUI
+implementation which was able to deliver the experience of statistical tests,
+plots and data manipulation easily accessible for R novices as well as advanced
+users. However, John Fox stated that R Commander's target was to provide
+functionality for basic-statistical courses though functionality increased over
+time beyond this (\cite{Fox2005}). In November 2002 Thomas Friedrichsmeier
+started the RKWard open-source software project with the goal to create an
+implementation of an R GUI based on KDE and Qt technologies.
 
+The scope of RKWard is deliberately broad, targeting both R novices and experts.
+Regarding the first group, the aim is to allow any person with knowledge on
+statistical procedures to start using RKWard for their everyday work,
+immediately, without having to learn anything about the R programming language,
+first. At the same time RKWard tries to support users who want to learn and
+exploit the full flexibility of the R language for automating or customizing
+analyses. At the other end of the learning curve, RKWard provides advanced IDE
+features to R experts to assist in the development of R scripts. Yet, the idea
+is that R experts, too will benefit from the availability task-oriented GUI
+dialogs from time to time, such as when exploring an unfamiliar type of analysis
+or by allowing to implement routinely performed tasks as a GUI element. In
+addition, many features, such as the integrated data editor, or the plot preview
+feature will be useful to R novices and R experts alike in their everyday work
+(see section \ref{Default Graphical User Interface Elements}).
+
+While RKWard tries to support users wishing to learn R, it is specifically not
+designed as a teaching tool (such as Rcmdr or TeachingDemos), but as a
+productive tool. This means that dialogs for statistical procedures in RKWard do
+not necessarily show a 1:1 correspondence to the underlying steps in R, but are
+rather oriented at statistical tasks. At the same time, RKWard provides a high
+level of transparency about the steps that are needed to perform any supported
+task in R. RKWard tries to make it easy for the user to see complete codes for
+all GUI actions. In doing so RKWard accepts relatively verbose generated code,
+deliberately, and in particular it does not attempt to wrap complex sequences of
+data manipulation or analysis into custom high-level R functions. We believe the
+task of providing such high-level functions is logically independent of the
+development of a GUI frontend, and should best be solved in dedicated R
+packages, where needed. Rather, RKWard limits itself to generate R code from GUI
+settings. This allows to make better use of the modular design of R, avoids
+locking in users to a specific GUI solution, and allows them more options for
+customizing generated code patterns. Further, RKWard does not impose artificial
+limitations on how users can work with the application. For example allowing to
+use only one data.frame at a time is or to use data from several frames is
+intentionally supported.
+
+Finally, RKWard is designed to allow users to create custom GUI dialogs easily
+(see sections \ref{technical_plugins} and \ref{example_plugins}).
+
+RKWard is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2
+or later. This means the RKWard code itself is GPL v 2 or 3 but effectively
+distributable only under GPL v 2 due to R code. Some documentation templates are
+GFDL licensed. The current project status of the core application is tagged as
+beta (K2009). However, from experience RKWard is reliably usable in productive
+scenarios. The source code, selected binaries and documentation is hosted at
+SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/). Milestones of the RKWards development are
+demonstrated in Figure \ref{development_overview}.
+
+In this paper we will first give an overview over the main GUI elements and features
+of RKWard. Next some technical aspects of the implementation will be dicussed. The paper
+concludes with two examples: One user centered example of a simple RKWard session, and
+an example, targetted at developers, for creating a simple plugin extension to RKWard.
+
+
 \bibliography{sources}
 \end{document}


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