[rkward-cvs] SF.net SVN: rkward:[3586] branches/jss_dec_10/FINAL_JSS_TEX/FINAL_splitted/ technical.tex

Fri May 20 10:42:00 UTC 2011

Revision: 3586
          http://rkward.svn.sourceforge.net/rkward/?rev=3586&view=rev
Author:   tfry
Date:     2011-05-20 10:42:00 +0000 (Fri, 20 May 2011)

Log Message:
-----------
Since this article is all about technical details, we can turn most subsections into main sections.
Also removing the section on internationalization. This is not terribly interesting from a technical point of view, and we did not find a good place for it in the main article.
So let's ditch it. We have been told to streamline, after all.

Modified Paths:
--------------
    branches/jss_dec_10/FINAL_JSS_TEX/FINAL_splitted/technical.tex

Modified: branches/jss_dec_10/FINAL_JSS_TEX/FINAL_splitted/technical.tex
===================================================================

--- branches/jss_dec_10/FINAL_JSS_TEX/FINAL_splitted/technical.tex	2011-05-20 10:21:30 UTC (rev 3585)
+++ branches/jss_dec_10/FINAL_JSS_TEX/FINAL_splitted/technical.tex	2011-05-20 10:42:00 UTC (rev 3586)
@@ -1,12 +1,12 @@
 %!TEX root=RKWard_paper.tex
-\section{Technical design}
-\label{sec:technical}
-In this supplement we will give an overview of the selected aspects of \pkg{RKWard}'s
-technical design and development process. We will give slightly more attention to the details of the
+\section{Introduction}
+In this supplement we will give an overview of some key aspects of \pkg{RKWard}'s
+technical design and development process, comparing them briefly to competing GUI solutions, where appropriate.
+We will give slightly more attention to the details of the
 plugin framework (Section~\ref{sec:technical_plugins}) used in \pkg{RKWard}, since this is central to the extensibility of
-\pkg{RKWard}.
+\pkg{RKWard}, and we will conclude with an example for extending \pkg{RKWard} by a plugin (Section~\ref{sec:example_plugin}).
 
-\subsection{Asynchronous command execution}
+\section{Asynchronous command execution}
 \label{sec:technical_asynchronous}
 One central design decision in the implementation of \pkg{RKWard} is that the
 interface to the \proglang{R} engine operates asynchronously. The intention is to
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@
  \label{fig:design_sketch}
 \end{figure}
 
-\subsection{Object modification detection}
+\section{Object modification detection}
 \label{sec:technical_omd}
 \pkg{RKWard} allows the user to run arbitrary commands in \proglang{R} at any time, even while
 editing a \code{data.frame} or while selecting objects for analysis in a GUI dialog. Any user
@@ -119,7 +119,7 @@
 and performance overhead. Special handling will be needed for environments and
 active bindings.
 
-\subsection{Choice of toolkit and implementation languages}
+\section{Choice of toolkit and implementation languages}
 \label{sec:technical_toolkit}
 In addition to \proglang{R}, \pkg{RKWard} is based on the \pkg{KDE} libraries, which are in turn based
 on \pkg{Qt}, and implemented mostly in \proglang{C++}. Compared to many competing libraries,
@@ -155,7 +155,7 @@
 strings with the \code{+}-operator, as available in \proglang{ECMAScript}, allows for a much
 more readable way to perform such basic text manipulation.
 
-\subsection{On-screen graphics windows}
+\section{On-screen graphics windows}
 \label{sec:technical_graphics}
 Contrary to the approach used in \pkg{JGR} \citep{JGR2010}, \pkg{RKWard} does
 not technically provide a custom on-screen graphics device. \pkg{RKWard} detects when
@@ -197,7 +197,7 @@
 for non-sequential browsing (see the section on graphics windows in the main article) providing a very intuitive browsing
 interface unlike the native implementations in \code{windows()} and \code{quartz()} devices.
 
-\subsection{Plugin infrastructure}
+\section{Plugin infrastructure}
 \label{sec:technical_plugins}
 One of the earliest features of \pkg{RKWard} was the extensibility by plugins.
 Basically, plugins in \pkg{RKWard} provide complete GUI dialogs, or re-usable
@@ -215,7 +215,7 @@
 especially for item response theory, distributions, and descriptive
 statistical analysis.
 
-\subsubsection{Defining a plugin}
+\subsection{Defining a plugin}
 \label{sec:technical_plugins_defining}
 Plugins consist of four parts as visualized in Figure~\ref{fig:plugin_structure} 
 \citep[see Section~\ref{sec:example_plugin} for an example; for a complete
@@ -275,7 +275,7 @@
 
 Changes to the source code of these elements take effect without the requirement to recompile \pkg{RKWard}.
 
-\subsubsection{Embedding and reuse of plugins}
+\subsection{Embedding and reuse of plugins}
 \label{sec:technical_plugins_embedding}
 \pkg{RKWard} supports several mechanisms for modularization and re-use of
 functionality in plugins. File inclusion is one very simple but effective
@@ -293,7 +293,7 @@
 code. Other examples of embedded plugins are options for histograms, barplots,
 and empirical cumulative distribution function (ECDF) plots (which in turn embed the generic plot options plugin).
 
-\subsubsection{Enforcing a consistent interface}
+\subsection{Enforcing a consistent interface}
 \label{sec:technical_plugins_consistency}
 \pkg{RKWard} tries to make it easy to create a consistent interface in all plugins.
 GUI-wise this is supported by providing high-level GUI elements, and embeddable
@@ -334,7 +334,7 @@
   too many of them.
 \end{itemize}
 
-\subsubsection[Handling of R package dependencies]{Handling of \proglang{R} package dependencies}
+\subsection[Handling of R package dependencies]{Handling of \proglang{R} package dependencies}
 \label{sec:technical_plugins_dependencies}
 A wide range of plugins for diverse functionality is present in \pkg{RKWard},
 including plots (e.\,g., boxplot) or standard tests (e.\,g., Student's t-test)\footnote{
@@ -386,19 +386,3 @@
 The automated testing framework is also useful in testing some aspects of the
 application which are not implemented as plugins, but this is currently limited
 to very few basic tests.
-
-\subsection{Internationalization}
-\label{sec:technical_internationalization}
-Currently strings in the main application are translated to varying extents in
-Czech (cs), Catalan (ca), Spanish (es), German (de), Chinese (zh\_CN), Turkish
-(tr), Polish (pl), Italian (it), French (fr), Greek (el), and Danish (da).
-Translatable strings are to be found under po/*.po in the sources. These files
-can conveniently be edited with front-ends like Lokalize\footnote{\url{http://i18n.kde.org/tools/}}. 
-
-Plugins and help pages in \pkg{RKWard} are not translatable at the time of this
-writing. While it will be technically possible to include the respective strings in
-message catalogs, this is currently not implemented in \pkg{RKWard}. Similarly, any
-output generated by \proglang{R} functions defined for \pkg{RKWard} is currently not
-translatable. Again, however, there is no technical barrier with respect to
-internationalization of \proglang{R} code, as discussed by \cite{Ripley2005a},
-and it is planned to make \pkg{\pkg{RKWard}} fully translatable in future versions.


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