Windows-specific changes to R
=============================
See the file NEWS for changes that affect all versions of R.
rw1020
======
There is a new menu item `Load History' on the File menu of the console.
The menu items Load/Save Image are now called Load/Save Workspace.
Environment variables R_HISTFILE and R_HISTSIZE can be set to specify
the name of the commands history file (default .Rhistory)
and its maximum size (in lines, default 512).
The RGui console now uses the same history mechanism as Rterm. The
history limit is now just on the number of lines (rather than on the
number of lines and the total size). The mechanism has been altered
so that Rterm records repeated lines (as Rgui always did).
The history is only saved when the workspace is, to be compatible with
other versions of R, and whether it is restored is controlled by
option --no-restore-history (implied by --no-restore and --vanilla).
There are some extra command-line editing commands: see the
Help | Console information screen.
Rterm in interactive use sets the title of the window it is running
in, and unsets it when it terminates.
make check no longer makes R, just runs the tests (as make test
always has).
The utilities Rd2dvi.sh Rd2txt Rdconv Rdindex Sd2Rd are no longer
batch files but accessed through a new front-end Rcmd.exe, so if this
is in your path you can use
Rcmd Rd2dvi.sh [options] files
Rcmd Rd2txt file
Rcmd Rdconv [options] file
Rcmd Rdindex [options] files
Rcmd Sd2Rd [options] file
There are new utilities (in rw1020sp.zip) INSTALL, REMOVE, SHLIB which
can be used to install a source package, remove a package and make a
DLL, and much closer versions of the Unix R utilities build and check.
Invoke these by
Rcmd INSTALL [options] pkgdir(s)
Rcmd REMOVE [options] pkg(s)
Rcmd SHLIB [options] file(s)
Rcmd build [options] pkgdir(s)
Rcmd check [options] pkgdir(s)
Use option --help with any of these for fuller details.
rw1011
======
New file README.Rterm providing basic documentation on Rterm.exe.
undoc() is now available under Windows.
There is a new script R_HOME/bin/build.sh, a version of R CMD build.
You will need R_HOME set as an environment variable to use it, and you
will need the full set of tools from tools.zip (see readme.packages)
in your path.
The batch wrappers to Perl files Rdconv.bat Rdindex.bat Rd2txt.bat
Sd2Rd.bat have been revised to work on more Perl/OS versions.
Other versions of Tcl/Tk may be used by setting TCL_VERSION in
MkRules (but only 8.31 has been tested).
Setting cell widths from the menu in the data editor now works reliably.
Having an empty line at the beginning of .Rhistory no longer breaks the
history-recall mechanism in Rgui.
Characters using the AltGr key now work in interactive use of Rterm.
(AltGr used to work like Alt.)
A file Makevars.win in the src directory of a package will be used in
preference to a file Makevars.
The Makefiles for packages now allow C++ code (with extension .cc or
.cpp or .C) in the src directory.
If you use a private library and HTML help, you need to copy R.css
from rw1011\library to each private library directory.
Function win.version() should give slightly more information (the
latest service pack number x.y) on Windows 2000.
rw1010
======
There is now a GUI preferences editor on the Edit menu in Rgui.
A data entry editor is now implemented. This is similar to the Unix
one (see ?dataentry: that has itself been considerably enhanced in
parallel with the Windows version) with the additional features that
double-clicking in a cell turns it into an editable field (entered as
a new value by navigating away from the cell), and there is a
right-click popup menu.
Rterm will now load and save the commands history (as Rgui does).
There is a new item on the File menu in Rgui to save the commands
history at that point in a session, and a new function savehistory()
(only applicable in Rgui and Rterm).
Colours in Rconsole can be specified as "Windows" and will be taken
from the current Windows colour scheme. (The preferences editor will
save the actual colour, though.)
The placement of multiple pagers is now `random' (so they will not
always appear in the exact centre of the screen) and under the MDI
interface the pager rows and columns settings are now used.
The postscript() device can now spool plots to a printer. You will
need a suitable program to send a file to the spooler (or even to send
it to ghostscript to interpret PostScript for the printer): the RedMon
suite available from http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/rjl.html and
GhostScript distribution sites should provide suitable tools. See
?postscript for further details.
The new xfig() device can be used, and a port of xfig to Windows (with
an X server and the Cygwin B20.1 environment and X11R6.4 installed) is at
ftp.franken.de:/pub/win32/develop/gnuwin32/cygwin/porters/Humblet_Pierre_A/B20
as xfig-3.2.2-cygwin-b20.1-bin.tar.gz.
The R DLL and executables now contain standard Windows version
information, which will appear on a Version tab of the Properties
dialog box in Explorer.
The internal unzip and the installer now use unzip5.41, not unzip5.40, and
the DLL interface is incompatible.
There are changes in the tools needed to build R (see the file INSTALL)
and those recommended for building packages from source (see the file
readme.packages).
New makefile target zipdata-% to zip up data directories in packages.
If there is a file `Makefile.win' in a package src directory this
will be used rather than MakePkgs (and the tcltk package provides
an example).
There is an example package `windlgs' in the package sources
distribution that shows how to use graphapp to build dialog boxes to
be called from menus, with a worked example of a t test done in three
ways. More details of graphapp, including a tutorial and a reference
manual, are at http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~loki/graphapp.
Optional support for the Tcl/Tk interface. To use this you need to
install tcl831.exe from dev.scriptics.com, and you will need the Tcl
and Tk dlls in your path. Also, you need to set the environment
variable TCL_LIBRARY, to something like c:/Program Files/Tcl/lib/tcl8.3.
The demos(tk*) will work on Windows.
The R mathematical functions can now be built as a DLL for use
with your own C programs. See src/nmath/standalone/README in the
sources.
Rdconv.bat no longer depends on having a Unix-compatible `cat' program
in your path.
A long-standing bug in the (vertical) alignment of symbols in plotmath
has been corrected.
Pagers should no longer flash when launched.
Launching a pager or data editor or graphics window now brings it
to the front, even from Rterm.exe. (Not for Tcl/Tk windows, unfortunately.)
Failure to load a DLL with dyn.load now gives extended error information.
rw1001
======
The installer, rwinst.exe, now checks for ZIP files as well as zip files,
as some browsers manage to map filenames to uppercase.
There are batch files Rd2txt.bat Rdconv.bat Rdindex.bat Sd2Rd.bat
which are the equivalent of the Unix `R CMD foo' utilities mentioned in
`Writing R Extensions'. To use these you must have R_HOME set as an
environment variable (using the form P:/R/rw1001). There is also a
shell script Rd2dvi.sh which you can use if you have sh.exe (as
used to compile packages) and latex etc. The environment variable
XDVI sets the previewer, defaulting to xdvi.bat.
A file `Makevars' in the `src' directory of a package can be used to
add to/override the MakeDll makefile used to make foo.dll, as on Unix.
(See `Creating shared libraries', section 3.4 of `Writing R Extensions'.)
Under rare conditions (lots of very short input lines) the history buffer
could overrun and so cause crashes. This has been possible since rw0623,
but first caused reported problems in rw1000 and has now been fixed.
Certain HP printer drivers (e.g. the 6/6MP-Postscript driver) reset the
FPU and so were causing crashes. This has been circumvented in this
version by restoring the settings before and after each page.
Building on a non-default drive should be more reliable, as Perl is
used to find the current drive.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
For changes prior to the release of R 1.0.0 on 29 Feb 2000
see the file CHANGES0 in the source distribution.