R 0.90.0 for Windows 9x and NT ============================== This distribution contains a binary distribution of R-0.90.0 to run on Windows 95, 98 and NT4 on Intel/clone chips. It is designed to be as close as possible to the implementation on Unix, but see the list of differences below. The port was by Guido Masarotto with many important contributions by Brian Ripley. See CHANGES for the new features of this version. Installation ============ The simplest way is to run the installer (double-click on the icon for rwinst.exe and navigate its wizard-like pages). To install manually, unpack rw0900b1.zip and rw0900b2.zip anywhere you like. It will unpack to a directory tree under rw0900. The help, HTML and latex help files are in separate files rw0900h.zip, rw0900w.zip and rw0900l.zip which should be unpacked in the same directory you unpacked rw0900b.zip. File rw0900d.zip contains PDF versions of the (draft) manuals for R, which unpack into rw0900/doc/manual. Usage ===== There are two executables in rw0900\bin: GUI: Rgui.exe runs as a standard Windows GUI executable and provides an R console in its own window. It takes the standard R command-line arguments; these are most easily set by making a shortcut to ...\rw0900\bin\rgui.exe and adding the arguments in the Target field. Set the `Start in' field of the shortcut to the directory you want to use as the working directory (where workspaces and files are saved and loaded from). Command-line editing is available: see Help | Console for details. The menus provide shortcuts to some R commands such as help, help.start, apropos, ls, load, save.image, search. The `load' menu items (Source R code, Load image) keep track of the directory that was last used, and start their dialog boxes from that directory the next time they are used. That directory can be made the working directory by the File | Change dir menu item. All the `save' menu items start dialog boxes at the current working directory: this includes Save image and the various ways to save graphics, as well as saving the workspace at the end of the session. Observe that the help files use the latin1 encoding. To see all the characters you must use an appropriate font (European-language True Type fonts should be OK). To check if your preferred font has latin1 capability, try "help(text)" and look at the examples. [Note: only a couple of files make use of latin1 characters not contained in the standard ASCII set so if you like a font without latin1 capability, use it.] TERMINAL/BATCH: Rterm.exe will run from a command line such as an MS-DOS or Commands Window running the standard shells, command.com (9x) and cmd.exe (NT), as well as the ports of bash and tcsh that we use. Its primary purpose is to allow batch operation, but it does provide all the facilities needed for interactive use, including simple command-line editing. Batch use: At it simplest, Rterm.exe can be used in a batch mode by commands like Rterm.exe --vsize 10M --nsize 400k --no-restore --no-save < infile > outfile although users will probably want to set up simple .bat or .cmd files to run batch jobs. Use with ESS: You can use Rterm.exe to provide inferior R-mode in ESS under NTEmacs, for example ess-5.1.9. The pager is automatically set to "console" so help will be displayed in emacs buffers. GRAPHICS: The screen device is called windows(). This is launched automatically, and can also be launched explicitly by windows() or win.graph() (or x11()) from both Rgui.exe and Rterm.exe. A printer device can be opened using win.print(), and graphs drawn as metafiles by win.metafile(). The graphics device pops up a separate window which has two menus. The device's File menu allows saving or printing or to run dev.off(). The History menu allows the recording of plots. When plots have been recorded they can be reviewed by PgUp and PgDn, saved and replaced. Recording can be turned on automatically (the Recording item on the list) or individual plots can be added (Add or the INS key). The whole plot history can be saved to or retrieved from an R variable in the global environment. There is only one graphics history shared by all the windows devices. HELP: There are several options for help, depending on which help files you installed. (i) Text help. This is the default, and the fallback option. It will display in the currently set pager (use options(pager=) to change). (ii) Compiled HTML files. Set this as the default by options(chmhelp=T) or for individual help items by help(topic, chmhelp=T). Full text search is available from the Search tab. To make use of this you will need a recent version of Windows or IE4 or later installed, or use the updater hhupd.exe on CRAN at bin/windows/windows-NT/etc. (iii) Windows .hlp files. Set this as the default by options(winhelp=T) or for individual help items by help(topic, winhelp=T). Full text search is available from the Search tab. The conversion to this format is a little rough, and tables may be incomplete. (iv) HTML help to be displayed in your normal browser. Set this as the default by options(htmlhelp=T) or for individual help items by help(topic, htmlhelp=T). Using help.start() sets the browser to the top-level page, from which you can access a search engine. (v) Latex help files are available for use with help(topic, offline=T). You will need to customize the file rw0651\bin\helpPRINT.bat: it contains instructions. Customization ============= Environment variables can be set as NAME=value on the command line, including in a short-cut. They can also be set (as NAME=value lines) in the file .Renviron, or if that does not exist HOME\.Renviron. Many aspects of the console (size, appearance, font, colours) can be customized by editing the file etc\Rconsole, and a copy with a user's settings can be put in her HOME directory or in the working directory. (The exact sequence is to search the directory pointed to by the first found of the environment variables R_USER then HOME then {HOMEDRIVE}{HOMEPATH} then the working directory, finally R_HOME\etc. This applies to .Renviron and other uses of `HOME' in our documentation.) The file contains a description of the settings that can be altered. See also ?Rconsole. The mapping between Windows fonts and R font's number can be set by editing the file etc\Rdevga, and a copy with a user's settings can be put in the HOME or working directory (see the description of Rconsole). This mapping applies to both the screen device and the printer device. Many R defaults can be set in the file R_HOME\etc\Rprofile or a user's file .Rprofile. In particular: - The pager is set by options(pager=). The default is "internal" which brings up a separate console-like window. The internal pager can use a single window or a different window for each topic shown (configurable in etc\Rconsole). Other possibilities we have used are "notepad" and "pfe32 /v", and "console" to list the files in the console (rgui.exe) or terminal window (rterm.exe). Adding packages =============== Binaries for many packages are available at CRAN/bin/windows/windows-NT/contrib. These are zip files which should be unpacked in rw0900\library. They are then available for use. You can also use the installer rwinst.exe to selectively unpack the zip files. The list of packages and functions given by HTML help and used by the search engine can be updated from a running R process by the command link.html.help() provided the owner of the process has write permission on rw0900\doc\html. If you have the source-package files and Perl installed you can use cd ...\rw0900\src\gnuwin32\help make indices Private libraries of packages can be used and can be specified by the environment variable R_LIBS. (Separate directories by ";" in this version.) They will not be linked to HTML help. In more detail, to use packages installed in directory R:\libraries\gm, set R_LIBS=R:\libraries\gm in the environment or on the command line, or add the line .lib.loc <- c("R:/libraries/gm", .lib.loc) to your .Rprofile or at the end of R_HOME\etc\Rprofile. To install a package from source code you need the source-package distribution rw0900sp.zip installed (but not the R source). This contains detailed instructions. Differences from Unix ===================== - R can be interrupted by Esc in Rgui and by Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Break in Rterm: Ctrl-C is used for copying in the GUI version. C-c C-c works under NTemacs. - Command-line editing is always available, but is much simpler than under readline-based input on Unix. - The commands history is saved between sessions only by Rgui: it is always saved even if the workspace is not saved. - The HTML function and package lists and search datasbase are not re-generated automatically by html.start(). Use link.html.help(). - Paths to files can be specified with "/" or "\\". - Using help.start() does not automatically send help requests to the browser: use options(htmlhelp=T) to turn this on. - Graphics save and replay only here. - system() is enhanced here and does not automatically use a shell. See its help page and that of shell. - graphics devices png(), jpeg() and bmp() are available in this version. Building From Source ==================== See the file INSTALL in the source distribution and the rw-FAQ. Feedback ======== Please send comments and bug reports to (preferably both of) Guido Masarotto Brian Ripley