General FAQ

From rkward

I need help! Where can I ask?

In case you can't find the relevant information in this wiki, see this page for the main ways to contact us.

Overview

What is RKWard?

RKWard is meant to become an easy to use, transparent frontend to the R-language. R is a very powerful, yet hard-to-get-into scripting-language with a strong focus on statistical functions. RKWard makes R programming easier and faster, by providing a graphical frontend that can be used by unexperienced users (thanks to easy-to-use dialog boxes) as well as experts (which are attracted by the integrated development environement proposed by RKWard).

RKWard then is (will be) something like a free replacement for commercial statistical packages. In addition to ease of use, three aspects are particularily important:

It's a transparent interface to the underlying R-language. That is, it does not hide the powerful syntax, but merely provides a convenient way, in which both newbies and R-experts can accomplish most of their tasks. A GUI can never provide an interface to the whole power of a language like R. In some cases users will want to tweak some functions to their particular needs and esp. to automate some tasks. By making the "inner workings" visible to the user, RKWard makes it easy for the user to see where and how to use R-syntax to accomplish their goals.
For the output, RKWard strives to separate content and design to a high degree. It will not try to design its own tables/graphs, etc, which have to be converted to the style used in the rest of a publication by hand. Currently RKWard uses HTML for its output. Using appropriate style definitions reformatting this output to match the rest of the publication will be easily doable. In future releases RKWard will even seek stronger integration with existing office suites.
it relies on a language, that is not only very powerful, but also extensible, and for which dozens of extensions already exist.

And of course, it's free as in free speech!

Are there other R GUIs?

Yes, there are. Here's the most complete list to date: http://www.sciviews.org/_rgui/ . The R Wiki has an overview, too (still lacking information at the time of this writing): http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php?id=guis:projects .

Some popular choices are:

Sciviews (Windows, only).
RCommander by John Fox might be mentioned as another versatile, but somewhat limited R-GUI, build upon TCL/TK and R language. RCommander is available for Windows and U-/Linux systems alike.
Another option of a GUI-like approach is offered by Emacs/ESS which comes with powerful capabilities to master programming, debugging and profiling of self written GNU R functions. That said, don't expect Emacs/ESS to be kind of a conventional GUI like SPSS or SAS (which by the way can also be run in Emacs/ESS!) rather than a terminal like
application offering lots of R functionality.

Compiling and installing

Precompiled packages and / or build scripts

You may want to have a look at the the list of known binaries and build scripts. Maybe a ready made package is available for your distribution.

Build RKWard from source

Detailed instructions are available: Building RKWard From Source

Design issues

Why is RKWard a KDE-application?

KDE offers a set of tools that allow us to make progress relatively quickly. The QT library on which it is based is one of the very best toolkits currently available.

Is RKWard available for Windows?

We are in the process of porting RKWard to Windows, and there is a first "offical" version of RKWard on Windows. Beware that this is work in progress, and there are known and unknown issues with the windows port.

Why is PHP used for the plugin framework? Wouldn't Python be a better choice?

The reasons for using PHP are:

fairly well known and stable (applies to python as well)
lots of functionality esp. with respect to string-processing (probably applies to python as well)
it's a templating language, i.e. you can write plain R-code (or HTML in the output section) and only fill in the code in the changing sections.

In the current design, PHP does not interface with R directly. Rather, RKWard is in charge of both and manages requests from both backends.

At this monent, we are actively looking into switching to a less heavy-weigth scripting solution.

Getting involved

What can I help with?

Please have a look at the Open Tasks for a list of good starting points. Or offer your help on the mailing list (see next question). We are looking for all sorts of skills and talents.

How can I edit this wiki?

This wiki is set up in a rather restrictive way for technical reasons. We do want you to edit this wiki, but you'll have to complete a number of steps to set up an account: Help:Wiki_Editing.

How to get in contact?

Mailing Lists

RKWard currently offers two main mailing lists:

rkward-users The main list for user discussion about RKWard. This is a good place to ask for help with RKWard. Also this mailing lists is kept posted on the most important developments and new file releases.
rkward-devel The main list for discussions concerning the development of RKWard. Posting is not restricted to developers. If your topic goes beyond mere usage questions, this list is for you.

Due to problems with spam, posting is restricted to subscribers on both lists, but non-spam posts by non-subscribers will be allowed manually.

Two further mailing lists are read-only, and intended primarily for developers:

rkward-cvs Subversion commit logs.
rkward-tracker Bug / RFE / Patch - tracker messages.

Forums

If you prefer posting in a Forum, you can do that as well:

Submitting bug reports / feature requests