Changes and bug fixing specific to this version:
We discuss here the following topics:
* NEWS
* THE GUI
* APPLE SCRIPT SUPPORT
* EXTERNAL EDITOR INTERACTION
* MEMORY
* SPECIFYING OPTIONS: the Preferences pane
* SPECIFYING ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES: the .Renviron file
* THE USER MENU
* R HELPERS
* SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
* KNOWN BUGS
* SHORT FAQ (in the MAC-FAQ)
* REMERCIEMENTES
NEWS
There are several enanchements in this release. Most of them concern
the user interface of R application but one of the most important novelty
is that now
R runs both on MacOS and MacOS X using Carbon technology. This means
that when you run R from MacOS X it run natively under the new System without
calling the Classic Compatibility Module. The use of R under MacOS X takes
lots of advantages starting from the new Aqua look.
As this version is based on the new Carbon technology some new bugs can appear that we were'nt able to found before releasing R officially.
Any feedback is then welcome at stefano.iacus@unimi.it
THE NEW GUI
Several menus are now present from this release. The structure of the
menus is as follows with a brief description.
| Menu | Item | Shortcut | Brief description |
| Apple (or Application Menu under MacOS X) | |||
| About R | Opens the R information dialog. Reports release informations. | ||
| Preferences | (under OS X only, see the Config menu for pre X Systems) | Opens the R Preferences pane | |
| File | |||
| New Edit Window | N | Opens an empty editable window. You can usethis as an internal editor for R. If the current active window isa graphic device window than a new macintosh() device will be opened. | |
| Edit Object | E | Is the equivalent of "edit(object)" | |
| Source File | O | Opens a file and sources it. This is equivalent to "source(file)" | |
| Open File For Editing | Opens a file in an editable window.Useful when you want to modify an existing script and test it. | ||
| File Show | F | Open a file in a non editable window. This isthe equivalent of R command "show.file(file)" | |
| Load Workspace File | L | If you want to load a wspace image otherthan ".RData" | |
| Save Workspace As | If you want to save an image file other the ".RData" | ||
| Page Setup | Calls the printer driver page setup | ||
| P | Print the text window (R Console etc) or the imagein the graphic device window. The image is rescaled to the page dimension of your printer. | ||
| Save | S | Save the window. This could be the content ofthe R Console i.e. your current R session any text window or the graphic device window. | |
| Save As... | Save the window. This could be the content ofthe R Console i.e. your current R session any text window or the graphicdevice window. This menu acts as a standard "Save As" menu so you have to specify each time the filename. | ||
| Close | W | Closes the current window. If it is the R Console window than it is interpreted as quitting R. | |
| Quit | Q | This menu item is on the Application Menu under MacOS X | |
| Edit | |||
| Undo | Z | ||
| Cut | X | ||
| Copy | C | If you use it on a graphic device window theimage is copied to the clipboard (see also knownbugs) | |
| Paste | V | ||
| Copy & Paste | You copy some text and the resultis pasted into the R Console window. You use thiswhen you select a piece of R code of text windowand then you want to R to execute it. This is quite useful when you want to test part of your script of the examples of an help window | ||
| Clear | |||
| Select All | A | ||
| Goto line | Active only for editable windows. It moves thecursor to a certain line | ||
| Tools | |||
| Show Workspace | It is equivalent to "ls()" | ||
| Clear Workspace | It is equivalent to "rm(list=ls())" | ||
| Load Workspace | Loads the ".RData" file; equivalent to load(".RData") | ||
| Save Workspace | Save the workspace to ".RData"; equivalent to "save.image()" | ||
| Load History | It is equivalent to "loadhistory()" | ||
| Save History | It is equivalent to "savehistory()" | ||
| Show History | It is equivalent to "history()" | ||
| Change Working Directory | D | Allows the user to change the workingdirectory by using a standard dialog | |
| Show Working Directory | It is equivalent to "getwd()" | ||
| Reset Working Directory | It is equivalent to "setwd(R.home())" | ||
| Show Libraries | It is equivalent to "library()" | ||
| Show DataSets | It is equivalent to "data()" | ||
| Windows | |||
| R Console | This menu contains by default only the "R Console" item and it is dynamically changed by appending/removing the names of any new/closed window | ||
| Config | |||
| Allow Interrupt | It is equivalent to set the option "Interrupt=TRUE" in the .Renvironment config file but this can be changed at runtime. This menu is syncronized with the option you select in the Preference pane. | ||
| On Open Source | It is equivalent to set the option "OnOpenSource=TRUE" in the .Renvironment config file but this can be changed at runtime. Useful to work with external editor such as Alpha. This menu is syncronized with the option you select in the Preference pane. | ||
| Preferences | (under Mac OS only) | Opens the R Preferences pane | |
| Help | |||
| R Help | ? | It is equivalent to "help.start()" | |
| Help On Topic | Opens a dialog where the user can specify an item he or she wants to see. equivalent to "help(topic)" or "?topic" | ||
| Search Help On | Opens a dialog where the user can specify an argument to have help on. It is equivalent to"help.search("topic")" | ||
| Run An Example | Opens a dialog where the user can specify an item of which he or she wants to run anexample of. It is equivalent to "example(topic)". | ||
| Link Packages Help | After installing a new package you need to link help files database. |
About R windows.
Normally R opens windows to let 80 character/columns to be displayed.
The size of the windows is calculated on the basis of the size of the font
used.
For non fixed fonts the algorithm can fail so the window can result
a bit larger or smaller then needed.
R windows are opened in cascade for each class (edit windows, file
show windows and graphic windows). This functionality does not work on
MacOS X yet.
APPLE SCRIPT SUPPORT
From release 1.3.1 R has partial support for AppleScripts.
This means two things: you can run applescripts from inside R using the
command applescript() (see the corresponing help) or you can ask R to run
commands from and applescript. The directory "scripts" in the main
R folder contains two examples of applescripts. What follows is an example of
applescript that interacts with R.
set CommandLine to "R.Version()"
try
tell application "R"
activate
with timeout of 90000 seconds
cmd CommandLine
cmd "Sys.getenv()"
end timeout
end tell
end try
Where cmd is the applescript command in the R dictionary that is used to tell R to execute an R command in the R Console. The syntax is cmd <command string>, where command string have to be in quotes. Actually, the output of the command is not sent back to the application that is calling R but to the R Console.
EXTERNAL EDITOR INTERACTION
From release 7.4.1 of the famous Alpha editor, there is a (tcl) mode
called S+/R.
When you open a file in Alpha with the extension ".s" or
".r" this new mode will be installed and you will in the Alpha menu
bar the "S+/R" menu. Of this menu you can use "Process File" or "Process
Selection" to interact with R. By default Alpha sends an “open” command
to R and by default R opens a file in a non editable window (equivalent
to the “File Show” menu). If you want R to source a file you should modify
activate the option "OnOpenSource" that
is set by default to "FALSE". You can change
this at runtime running via the Config/OnOpenSource menu or accessing
the Preferences pane.
The latest version of Alpha can be found at
http://alpha.olm.net
MEMORY
Under MacOS you should reserve a fixed amount of memory to each application.
As R is just an application, you need to set this to a bigger amount of
memory if for some reason R went out of memory. To do this, go to the Finder
and select the R aplication icon. Then with CMD+I key obtain the Information
for R. Select "Memory" and the fix the amount of memory you need. Under
MacOS X, there is no need to reserve memory to R. R will use as much
memory as it needs.
SPECIFYING OPTIONS: the Preferences pane
The Preferences pane allow you to configure a bit R GUI and behaviour.
You can set the tab size in your edit windows, the font type and size of
text windows and R Console as well as the colors of the text in R Console.
You can also specify a particular font for the graphic device and the
resolution of the graphic device. Finally you can specify if R should
accept User breaks (CMD+. or Esc). If this option is enabled R is a bit
slower. You can instruct R on what to do when a file is opened: source it
or simply show in the internal viewer.
Take care that under MacOS R creates a file in the Preferences folder of
you System Folder. If you switch to MacOS X than, this folder is no longer
the default Preferences folder so you have either to move th "R
preferences" file to "~user/Library/Preferences/" directory or reset the
preferences.
If you have different logins under OS X, remember that each user should set its own
preferences.
SPECIFYING ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES: the .Renviron file
In this file you can specify some of options or environment variables. This is not standard
for general MacOS/X applications but has been implemented for
compatibility reasons. If you don't need to set environment variables you
can ignore what is in this file.
The environment file is used by R application both to simulate the
enviroment on a standard Unix or Windows system.
You can always use "Sys.getenv()" to see which variables are set to
some values.
The .Renviron file looks like this:
an option is a "Rkey" with its "keyvalue" that you can specify in new separate
line as follows RKey=keyvalue. Consider that RKey=keyvalue and RKey
= keyvalue are different, that means that blanks/spaces are significant.
"RKey" and "keyvalue" are case sensitive. A symbol "#" at the beginning
of a line means that this is a commented out line.
You can find more details on that in the .Renviron file itself.
THE NEW USER MENU
The user has now the ability to create a menu with several menuitems,
up to 99, where to keep preferred R commands.
With the commands add.menu.cmd("label","R_command") the user adds a menuitem named "label" to the
User menu. When the command is selected from the menu, R executes the command "Rcommand"
associated to it.
The User menu is created dynamically, so that user will never see it if he does not add any
item to it.
Several functions to manipulate the user menu are previewed:
| get.menu.cmd("label") | returns the R Command associated to menu item "label" and the corresponding menu number |
| get.num.cmd(menunum) | returns the R Command associated to menu item number "menunum" and the corresponding menu label |
| del.menu.cmd("label") | removes the menu item "label" from the User menu |
| del.num.cmd(menunum) | removes the menu item numbered "menunum" from the User menu |
| del.usr.cmd("label") | removes the whole User's menu |
| add.menu.cmd("label","RCommand") | adds a menu item to the User's menu, if any, with associated the R command "RCommand" |
R HELPERS
* If you want to use an external editor we suggest you to use Alpha
version 7.4.1 or newer that contains a S+/R mode. Alpha home page
is
http://alpha.olm.net
To run the R application you need at least 42MB of free memory for the
application itself you work under MacOS but there is no limitations under
MacOS X as virtual memory is always on.
You need the latest version of the
CarbonLib
library from Apple. At the time of this release, version 1.4 is the current non developer release.
Normally it is included in System 9.2 and X.
Now R needs the f2cLib shared library to run. This
library is distributed with R but in case you miss it you can found it here.
The minimum System version release is 8.6 (+ CarbonLib library).
You need the WasteLib library. This library is distributed with R
binaries.
You need the zlibLib library. This library is distributed with R
binaries.
| Q | How can I manage invisible files under MacOS X ? |
| A | Under Unix it is typical that invisible files are files starting with a "." (dot) in the filename. MacOS X conforms to this convention. So it could happen that your preferred editor doesn't allow you to open and or write files like .Rprofile or .Renviron under MacOS X (this is the case of BBedit as reported by one user). You have several options: one of this is to a file like "some_file" with your editor or R, and then use the system() command to change its name as follows system("mv some_file .some_file"). Then use system("ls -al") to see if all went right. |
| Q | On exit: Why I can't save the workspace image via file dialog under MacOS X ? |
| A | As before, files starting with a dot, such as ".RData" cannot be managed
directly via standard dialogs (you can see invisible files but
you can't specify them as filenames !) To save the workspace image, you can either save it with a different name (e.g. "RData", but in this the workspace image will not be reloaded the next you start R), or you save it beofre quitting R: type "save.image()" from the R Console and then "q()" replying "n" when R asks for "Save workspace image? [y/n/c]:". |
| Q | How can I work on a separate directory for each of my projects? |
| A | Under Unix you usually create a directory, go into it and launch R. Under MacOS you can create a directory and put all the files that you need there. You then (or before) run R in its own directory and use the menu item "Tools->Change Working Directory" to change the current working directory to directory you have created. You can then work as you do in Unix. You can save/load workspace image to this directory, as well as the command history files. You can then reload these next time you work. |
| Q | How can I interrupt lengthy operations or output ? |
| A | You can now use the standard Macintosh control break sequence, that is you should press "Cmd option" and "." (dot). This will interrupt any R loops. The "Esc" key gives you the same result. |
| Q | How can I change memory settings for R ? (MacOS pre X only) |
| A | You cannot use the standard settings as on other platforms. You should assign memory to R from the Finder/Information dialog for R application. See Section "Memory" above. |
| Q | When I use to send R output to a file like "my_file", R seems to work on this file but I cannot find it. What happened ? (MacOS X only) |
| A | On MacOS X it is important to specify correctly the file names. If you want the file to be created in your current working directory you have to put a ":" before file name, such as ":myfile" otherwise the file will be created as "/my_file", i.e. in the root "/" directory. This is in particular important when you specify directories relative to your current working directory. |
REMERCIEMENTS
I would like to thank among the others (only few I can remember due to my brain volatility...) some of the people
who have contantly sent me
feedback on this Macintosh port of R or simply suggetested me some possibile
directions. So, merci, in random order, to P. Macdonald, P. Flint, R. Gill, K. Pflugshaupt,
J. DeLeeuw, G. Sawitzki and half of the R-Core.
stefano.iacus@unimi.it