rkward+update

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi!

On Fri, 4 Mar 2016 01:04:33 +0100
klerer at sxmail.de wrote:
[...]
> [a] I decided to delve into statistical programming
> language R in 2015, seeking to get a properly embeddable R GUI. Since
> "rkward" was described to be suitable for R on a Linux system (mine:
> current Debian-flavour "Kubuntu" on a 64bit system) that uses KDE, I
> choose the product you developed (current and still running version:
> 0.6.1).
[...]

As you have found out, neither R 3.0.2, nor RKWard 0.6.1 are current.
Note that this is not so much a problem specific to RKWard. Rather you
seem to have opted for a "long term support" version of KUbuntu, and
that does mean most packages will grow out-of-date over the lifetime of
your installation. RKWard _and_ R are _both_ rather old versions on your
installation. Fortunately, backport archives exist for both R and
RKWard (https://launchpad.net/~rkward-devel), so in general you can use
the most recent versions of R and RKWard running on an otherwise
conservative installation, rather easily.

> [b2] Now that R version number
> approaches 3.5, I intend to better learn about the problems I have no
> oversight over so far. It is high time to determine how to 'liberate'
> R from some constraints I experienced as (3); using "rkward" R
> console instead of R-within-bash console resulted in unforeseen
> (non)results when some commands were not yielding what logically and
> normally they would have had to deliver. I was told (via email
> exchange with) by an author of a a fairly instructive R book, Mr
> Norman Matloff, that the GUI had not full take on R (he put it
> something like that there was something "masked") as it could and
> should have if all the intrinsic prerequisites of the respective book
> examples were fulfiled.

RKWard does "mask" a handful of R functions. For instance, Sys.setwd()
is "overridden" to make RKWard aware of the current working directory,
when that gets changes. q() is overridden so that RKWard will prompt to
save files and data before you quit. require() is overridden so that
RKWard will offer a dialog to install packages if missing. X11() is
overridden to open the RK()-device, instead.

Also of course certain options have different defaults than in a
console session of R. For instance, browser is set to the internal
HTML-viewer, pager is set to open text files in an integrated window,
etc.

What I am _not_ currently aware of is any problems caused by this. If
you are running into any specific problem, please do report it. (NB:
you should upgrade to 0.6.4, first. We routinely do fix issues when we
encounter them. Perhaps, for instance you were running into lockup
issues using tcl/tk elements, which were fixed for 0.6.3).

[...]
> Would, thus, a
> higher "rkward" version's installation heal the problems (and make
> descriptions given by me in paragraphs [b1] and [b1] obsolete)

b1: Yes. b2: Depends on what exactly you are seeing. I cannot tell
based on your (lack of) description.

> of an
> "rkward" version unfunctionable when it comes to updates "the regular
> way"?

Use the PPAs, I linked to, above (rkward-stable-cran, probably). These
integrate into the "regular" Ubuntu package management.

Regards
Thomas
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