The R Project SVN R

            Dear Emacs, please make this -*-Text-*- mode!
    **************************************************
    *    Windows-specific changes to R       *
    *    See the file NEWS for changes that  *
    *        affect all versions of R.       *
    **************************************************


    **************************************************
    *                        *
    *          2.9 SERIES NEWS           *
    *                        *
    **************************************************


            CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.9.0


NEW FEATURES

    o   memory.size() and memory.limits() now return rounded values.
    
    o   The Rgui preferences dialog now allows more flexible colour
        settings, and shows a sample of what will be displayed.

    o   The file selection items on Rgui's File menu now work in
    Unicode and so allow filenames not in the current encoding to
    be selected.

    o   file.choose() and choose.files() now work with Unicode file
    names, so are able to select filenames not in the current
    encoding.  (Note that we do not expect to handle directory
    paths not in the current encoding and they will not be
    retained as the current search directory.)

    o   The script editor is now able to open files with names which are
    not in the current encoding: however the title displayed will
    replace invalid bytes by '?'.

    o   file() and pipe() now open non-ASCII pathnames as Unicode:
    this helps if R is running in a character set different from that
    used by Windows.

    o   help(topic, offline=TRUE) now creates a file called <topic>.tex,
    rather than Rdoc.tex.




    **************************************************
    *                        *
    *          2.8 SERIES NEWS           *
    *                        *
    **************************************************


        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.8.0 patched


NEW FEATURES

    o   R_HOME/bin/helpPRINT.bat now contains an example of use with
    MiKTeX to produce a PDF version of the help file.


BUG FIXES

    o   The windows() device now works around the total clipping of
    semi-transparent rectangles and circles that extend outside
    the device region.
    
    o   The script editor did not respect user preferences for the
    background colour.
    
    o   normalizePath() no longer returns a garbage string when the
        input is bad; it now signals an error. (PR#13199)
        
    o   File share/sh/dcf.sh was not distributed with the binary
        build. (PR#13200)

    o   dir.create() did not print the path correctly in warning messages.

    o   The C-level function consolecmd had been broken in non-Latin-1
    single-byte locales in R 2.8.0 by changes intended to support
    the Japanese IME.  This affected some menu items in Rgui
    (e.g. to source R files with non-Latin-1 names) and submitting
    commands from the script editor, but only in rarer encodings
    such as Central European, Greek and Cyrillic.  (PR#13195,
    probably also PR#13120)

    o   The attenpt to make the 'Load' button in the GUI preferences
    start in the home directory failed if the latter was specified
    with forwward slashes, and reset the current search directory
    for other file open dialogs (e.g. for opening a script).

    o   The installer would sometimes write the current version
    information to the registry even if that option was not
    checked.



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.8.0


NEW FEATURES

    o   Rterm --ess sets stdout to be unbuffered, as it would be for
    output to a terminal.

    o   windows() gains a new argument 'clickToConfirm', default TRUE,
    which controls if new-frame confirmation is done via clicking
    (or ENTER) on the window (the recent default) or via a
    question in the console (the default for other interactive
    devices).  The non-default behaviour may be useful when R is
    driven indirectly (e.g. via ESS) and for some Rterm users.

    o   If the HOME environment variable is not set, Rgui and Rterm
    will set it to match R_USER (as Rcmd does).

    o   The graphics devices bmp, jpeg, png, tiff and win.metafile
    perform tilde-expansion on their 'filename' argument.  Also
    savePlot.


UTILITIES

    o   Rcmd sets many more enviroment variables, including all those
    set by R CMD under a Unix-alike which make sense on Windows.

    o   Rcmd now follows a similar strategy to R when finding a valid
    TMPDIR setting: it tries TMPDIR, TMP, TEMP and R_USER looking
    for a directory -- the last will succeed as it does for R.

    o   Rcmd has a new utility open.exe to open files via their file
        associations.

    o   Rcmd Rd2dvi now opens .dvi and .pdf files via their file
        associations (if set -- MiKTeX sets 'yap' for .dvi).

    o   Rcmd check now checks the latex of any package vignettes if
    texi2dvi (presumably from MiKTeX) is found on the path.

    o   Package checking (including 'make check') is no longer done in a
        C locale but in the current locale (although LANGUAGE=en is
        used).

    o   Rproxy.dll is no longer part of the R distribution: it has
    been replaced by CRAN package rscproxy.


BUG FIXES

    o   winDialog() and winDialogString() check that they are being
    used in an interactive session.

    o   The Korean translation of the RGui menus has been corrected
        and restored.  (Thanks to June Kim and Seung-ho Kang.)
        
    o   The list of hives in the readRegistry() defaults contained
        a typo; error messages were incomplete. (PR#12937)
        
    o   The custom install options were not saved/restored when the
        installer was run with /SAVEINF or /LOADINF respectively.

    o   savePlot() expected 'filename' in the native encoding.



    **************************************************
    *                        *
    *          2.7 SERIES NEWS           *
    *                        *
    **************************************************


        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.7.2 patched


BUG FIXES

    o   iconv() was incorrectly identifying R running in an Eastern
    European locale as using ISO-8859-2 (aka Latin-2) rather than
    CP1250: they differ in the positions of some characters,
    notably s and z with caron.  This was seen in tcltk output
    from Rcmdr in 2.7.x, but might have occurred elsewhere (and
    earlier).

    This also affected localeToCharset() which incorrectly
    returned "ISO8859-2".

    The same issue seems to have caused problems with starting
    R 2.7.x in the Chinese (Hong Kong S.A.R.) locale on some
    systems (e.g. PR#12658): the problems were with locale names
    which contained periods.

    o   dir.create(recursive = TRUE) was not working on //server/share
    paths.

    o   The clip region was sometimes wrong when printing from the
    menu on a windows() graphics device (in 2.7.2 only).

    o   The windows() device would sometimes ignore font family
        requests (PR#12931).    



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.7.2


NEW FEATURES

    o   Rgui has a new menu item 'Html search page' on the Help menu,
    which goes directly to the HTML search form.  This is needed
    by users of Firefox 3, which generates incorrect links in
    search results when the page is accessed via the 'Html help'
    menu item (or via help.start()).


BUG FIXES

    o   Saving a graph in TIFF format could crash R (PR#11804).
    
    o   Rterm in interactive use did not implement R_FlushConsole() fully.

    o   getGraphicsEvent() did not return onMouseMove events while a
    mouse button was depressed.

    o   The confirmation of a new frame for a windows() graphics
    device works harder to give the device focus, including
    bringing it to the top.

    o   glob (used by Sys.glob() and unlink()) was not working correctly
        on some filename patterns including non-ASCII characters.
        Part of the problem was specific to 2.7.[01], part has existed
        since 2.5.0.

    o   Sys.glob() returned a UTF-8 result in 2.7.[01] but failed to
    mark its encoding.

    o   User menus were not properly removed when a graph window was 
    closed.

    o   Rscript -e (and Rterm -e) failed on Vista because the MSVCRT
    function 'tmpfile' is broken on that platform.

    o   Making a .msi installer now works with WiX 2.0.5805.0 (the file
    format had been changed since 2.0.4221.0 as previously tested).

    o   The grid package could set the clipping region outside the
    device region, and the windows() device now intersects the two
    when setting the clipping region.  Once an invalid region was
    set, semi-transparent text and lines might have been omitted.

    o   Some (but not all) Korean users have been having problems with
    Korean translations of the RGui menus.  These had not been
    updated for a long time, and have now been removed.



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.7.1


NEW FEATURES

    o   Rgui now accepts Unicode characters invalid in the locale when
    pasted in and converts them to \uxxxx sequences before passing
    to R.

    o   The Save as | Postscript ... file selection box now offers
    *.eps (default) and *.ps file selections.

    o   nchar() now gives the number of characters and their width as
    would be printed in Rgui for non-representable UTF-8 strings,
    not as they would be printed in Rterm (via <U+xxxx> escapes).

    o   savePlot() now adds the file type as an extension to the
    filename if no dot ('.') is present in the filename.  This
    provides the same default as in versions prior to 2.7.0, but
    allows the extension to be specified explicitly. (Contributed
    by Steve Ellison.)


BUG FIXES

    o   Sys.getenv() could read incorrectly non-ASCII values.

    o   The vertical scrollbar on the data editor/viewer now works
    when scrolling beyond 65535 rows.  (PR#11291)

    o   getWinProgressBar() returned an integer result -- it now
        returns a double value.

    o   basename() and dirname() could truncate their results when
    Unicode chars were used (usually in a CJK locale).

    o   memory.size() no longer wraps around allocations greater than
    2Gb.  (PR#11596)
    
    o   file.choose() in SDI mode now restores the window focus
        properly.



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.7.0


WINDOWS VERSIONS

    o   Versions of Windows older than 2000 are no longer supported
    (specifically, 95, 98, ME, NT4).  Windows 2000 is minimally
    tested, but those tests were successful.


GUI CHANGES

    o   The folder selection dialog used by choose.dir() and
    File | Change dir is now re-sizeable with a status line showing
    the currently selected path, rather than having a separate
    'Browse' button.

    o   When Rgui is launched from a terminal, C output from ill-formed
    packages that write to stdout or stderr rather than use
    Rprintf will appear in the terminal rather than being lost.
    (Only on XP or later.)  This can be very handy for debugging C
    code in packages: just write debugging messages to stdout.


INTERNATIONALIZATION

    o   If a string presented to the parser contains a \uxxxx escape
    invalid in the current locale, the string is recorded in UTF-8
    with the encoding declared.  This is likely to throw an error
    if it is used later in the session, but it can be printed, and
    used for e.g. plotting on the windows() device.  So "\u03b2"
    gives a Greek small beta and "\u2642" a 'male sign'.  Such
    strings will be printed as e.g. <U+2642> except in the Rgui
    console (see below).
    
    o   Rgui has been re-written to work internally in Unicode.  This
    means that copy and paste will be done in Unicode, and should
    now work correctly if R is being run in a different locale
    from other applications.  There is more support for input
    methods, thanks to Ei-ji Nakama.

    o   The Rgui console can display UTF-8 encoded strings (provided
    the font selected has the glyphs needed).

    o   The windows() family of devices now always use Unicode fonts
    (except for the Symbol font), not just in multibyte locales.
    This means it should be possble to plot in an 8-bit locale
    other than the system locale (e.g. for R running in Russian
    with Windows set to French).

    Further, they can handle UTF-8-encoded strings, so if a
    character string in R is marked (see ?Encoding) as UTF-8, it
    can be plotted (for a suitable font) even if it is not a valid
    character in the current locale.  Thus one way to plot a Greek
    beta (Unicode point U+03B2) is text(x, y, "\u03b2").

    The postscript() and pdf() devices handle UTF-8-encoded
    strings provided the characters used are in both the output
    encoding and the PostScript font used.

    o   Environment variables are read and set in Unicode by
    Sys.getenv()/Sys.setenv().

    o   Sys.info() uses UTF-8 machine, login and user names.

    o   readClipboard() can read Unicode text (format = 13), and
    writeClipboard() can write it.

    o   file() and pipe() connections and the functions basename(),
    dir(), dirname(), dir.create(), DLL.version(), file.access(),
    file.copy(), file.create(), file.exists(), file.info(),
    file.remove(), file.rename(), getwd(), load(),
    normalizePath(), path.expand(), save(), setwd(), shell(),
    shell.exec(), shortPathName(), Sys.chmod(), Sys.glob(),
    system() and unlink() have been converted to use Unicode
    filenames.

    Pathnames you select (by choose.files(), choose.dir() and
    file.choose()) are returned in UTF-8.

    list.files() still works with the native charsets as we do not
    have a Unicode regexp engine.  (The code for grep uses wide
    chars internally but does not provide an interface.)

    o   Collating (e.g. <) and sorting is done in UTF-8 where one of
    the items is in UTF-8.

    o   If readLines() or scan() is passed an unopened connection with
    a non-default 'encoding' argument, it will re-encode to UTF-8
    and declare the encoding on character columns.


TIME ZONES

    o   This version of R no longer makes use of Windows' flawed concept
    of time zones but replaces it by Arthur Olson's public-domain
    tz database (which is widely used, including on Linux, Mac OS
    X, Solaris, AIX, FreeBSD and by Java and Tcl).  This means
    that time zones should now be referred to by their 'standard'
    names, and will be output correctly (e.g. not the incorrect
    'GMT Daylight Time' for 'British Summer Time' used by
    Windows).

    o   An attempt is made (once per session) to identify the current
    timezone from the Windows' Registry.  If this does not work or
    is incorrect, set the 'TZ' environment variable appropriately:
    a list of known timezones is given in
    R_HOME/share/zoneinfo/zones.tab (some alternative names will
    also be recognized).  (Thanks to Uwe Ligges for testing
    various versions on German versions of Windows: time zone
    names are stored in the language of the Windows install.)

    o   Since the Windows C runtime does not think that times prior to
    1970-01-01 00:01 *in Seattle* are valid, heuristics had to be
    used for the time zones pre-1970.  Now the database is
    available for 1902-1969 (and nowhere had DST prior to 1902 and
    the time offset is assumed to be the same as in 1902) and so
    the results are reliable from the onset of standard time
    (second half of the nineteenth century) until the near future
    (since legislators change time zones with little notice).


GRAPHICS DEVICE CHANGES

    o   Options "graphics.record", "windowsBuffered", "xpinch" and
    "ypinch" have been replaced by a function windows.options() to
    set the defaults for the arguments of the windows() device.

    o   The windows() device has a new argument 'title' to set the
    title of the window.

    o   The windows() device no longer sizes the window to allow for
    scrollbars that might be needed for rescale="fixed", which
    means the default size really is 7 inches square and not 7.177
    inches.

    o   Saving a graphics window containing semi-transparent colours
    to BMP, JPEG or PNG now works.

    o   The bmp(), jpeg() and png() devices support semi-transparent
    colours.  See ?png for use with transparent backgrounds.

    Specifying 'res' to these devices now scales the text size and
    line width.

    o   Drawing circles is now done with an integer diameter rather
    than radius and so can be more accurate for small circles.
    You can see this in the pairs plot and coplot examples in
    demo(graphics) which on a 96dpi system use diameter 5 rather
    than radius 2.

    o   There is a new tiff() graphics device, and an option to save to
    TIFF from the graphics device menu and in savePlot().  (The
    only advantage of (simple) TIFF over PNG is that some journals
    are unable to cope with formats from as recently as 1996.)

    o   savePlot() no longer automatically adds an extension to the filename.


PACKAGE INSTALLATION

    o   Using PKG_C[XX]FLAGS instead of PKG_CPPFLAGS for -I and -D
    flags is now a fatal error.

    o   INSTALL does selection of lazyloading or not via an initial
    dummy installation, so large packages which cannot be
    installed without lazyloading and do not specify it may
    succeed when they did not earlier.

    o   The new argument dyn.load(DLLpath=) was implemented to make
    DLL conflicts easier to manage on Windows (see ?dyn.load), and
    is used by package tcltk.  This changes the meaning of the
    environment value MY_TCLTK: its value is now the path to the
    directory containing tcl85.dll and tk85.dll.

    o   The GraphApp DLL is now called Rgraphapp.dll to avoid any
    conflicts.  Packages using it (Cairo, RWinEdt) will need to be
    re-installed for R 2.7.0.

    o   zlib is now packaged as Rzlib.dll and its headers are
    installed.  Packages attempting to use the former private 
    entry points in R.dll will need to be modified to include
    $(ZLIB_LIBS) in PKG_LIBS.

    o   install.packages() now handles type="source", repos=NULL
        installs.


OTHERS

    o   bitmap(), dev2bitmap() and embedfonts() now look at environment
    variable GSC if R_GSCMD is unset.  (This is the variable used
    by ps2pdf and similar batch files.)

    o   loadRconsole() may now be used in Rterm and embedded R
    (where it affects graphics windows and pagers).  Embedded R
    no longer reads the Rconsole file on startup.

    o   getClipboardFormats() by default returns a human-readable
    character vector, but will give numeric output with new
    arguent 'numeric = TRUE'.

    o   New function readRegistry() to read registry hives.

    o   The progress bar in download.file() is now supressed by
        quiet=TRUE (as it has long been on Unix).
        
    o   RSetReg now uses full pathnames, the same as the regular
        installer.

    o   Font Consolas has been added to the console fonts listed in the
    GUI preferences widget.

    o   New widget winProgressBar() (based on the progress bar used by
    download.file()).

    o   The download progress bar now shows the percentage done in the
        title bar (and hence in the Windows task bar).

    o   download.file() now selects mode="wb" if 'mode' is not
        supplied and the file extension on the url looks like a binary file.

    o   tools::texi2dvi() detects the use of MikTeX's texi2dvi and
        uses its '-I path' argument to add the path to R's style files
        (such as Sweave.sty) to the input search path.

    o   R CMD Rd2dvi defaults to 'yap' as the previewer (rather than
    xdvi.bat) -- as before this is set by the environment variable
    'xdvi'.

    o   The size of the Rgui buffer is now set in characters not bytes
    (the difference only matters in CJK locales), but for
    backwards compatibility the entry in Rconsole is still called
    'bufbytes'.  The default has been increased to 250,000 chars
    (0.5Mb).


BUILDING R

    o   Support for the ACML BLAS has been withdrawn (there is no
    version of ACML 4.0.0 for gcc under Windows, and none at all
    for gfortran).

    o   We assume version 2.7.0 of Rtools.exe, in which gcc is
    version 4.2.1.

    o   We assume Tcl/Tk version 8.5.x (included in version 2.7.0 of
    Rtools.exe).  Earlier versions can be selected in MkRules.
    The distribution in Rtools (and hence in the binary installer)
    includes the BWidget and Tktable extensions.


BUG FIXES

    o   If a windows(rescale="fit") device was shrunk initially to fit
    on screen, the font size was not rescaled to take account of
    the initial shrink factor.

    o   If windows(ypinch=) was specified, the 'width' argument's value
    was used for the height.

    o   The Graphapp computation for keyboard accelerators for menus was
    not always working correctly, at least on Windows XP -- this
    affected e.g. Alt-M plus 'i' for 'List search path', where the
    second 's' was being underlined.  (PR#11036)
    
    o   The winDialogString() dialog now releases CPU cycles while
        waiting for input. (PR#11045)

    o   R CMD now sets TEXINPUTS to .;%R_HOME%/share/texmf;%TEXINPUTS%;
    by exact analogy with Unix-alikes (that is, including the
    current directory before R's texmf directory).



    **************************************************
    *                        *
    *          2.6 SERIES NEWS           *
    *                        *
    **************************************************


        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.6.2 patched

INSTALLER

    o   The installer now uses version-specific identifiers so that
    multiple versions of R can be installed and uninstalled
    separately. (PR#10746)



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.6.2

WORKAROUNDS

    o   We set some environment variables to work around hangs in Rgui
    when packages (e.g. the then current version of tseries) use
    Fortran WRITE calls.  The Fortran output will be written to a
    file named 'fort.6' in the working directory.

    o   Browsing for a directory in choose.dir() and the Rgui
    'Change Dir...' menu item now works around Vista's confusion
    about 'desktop' by starting at 'Computer' on Vista/Server 2008.

    o   The shortcuts created by the installer now start R in the user's
    personal folder (typically 'My Documents' or 'Documents').


NEW FEATUES

    o   win.version() and Sys.info() know about recent and upcoming
    Windows versions, including if they are running on a 64-bit
    platform.

    o   The listbox used by select.list() now responds to
    double-clicking an item (as if the item had been selected and
    then the OK button pressed).

    o   The header iconv.h is now installed, and can be used by
    packages in conjunction with PKG_LIBS=-liconv .

    o   The value of "default" for the postscript() 'paper' argument for
    savePlot() and the windows() graphics device menus is now
    interpreted as "special" (rather than "a4" or "letter"): it
    can still be overridden by setting ps.options().  (This changes
    the default output to be most suitable for inclusion in other
    documents rather than to produce a page for printing.)


BUG FIXES

    o   If a graphics window was opened in MDI mode while the console
    was zoomed, it would not be initialized properly.
    
    o   The graphics window placement parameters on the GUI preferences
        dialog were being ignored.

    o   The text field in a drop-down list (as used in GUI preferences
    for fonts) will now scroll horizontally when a user enters
    text that exceeds the display width.

    o   If Rterm is invoked as 'R', the status code (as passed to q())
    is now returned (rather than 0 or 1).
    
    o   Double clicking on a saved workspace (or dragging and dropping it
    onto Rgui.exe) failed to open it if the Rprofile or Rprofile.site file
    changed the working directory.


OTHERS

    o   The MSVC run-time (used by MinGW) has a global variable to
    determine whether files default to text or binary mode.  R now
    overrides this setting so that files are always read in text
    mode by default: this is relevant to embedded uses of R.



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.6.1


PACKAGE INSTALLATION

    o   Fortran code in packages is no longer compiled with -Wall, as
    this is not done on other platforms.


OTHERS

    o   The canvas used when plotting on a jpeg() or bmp() device with
    a transparent background (most often by copying from a screen
    device with the default transparent background) is now white
    and not grey.

    o   It seems file.access() can be unreliable both ways: that is it
    can also report that access is barred when it is not.
    (Seen on network file systems.)  So install.packages() to a
    single library no longer makes use of file.access() but checks
    directory creation instead: it is still possible that you can
    create a directory but not be allowed to create a .dll or .chm
    file, at least under Vista.

    o   When R_COMPLETION is set to FALSE, TAB is no longer ignored,
    but advances to the next tab stop in Rterm (the pre-2.5.0
    behaviour) and inserts a space in Rgui.


BUG FIXES

    o   Saving a plot to Postscript or PDF required the font database
    to have been initialized: this is now done if necessary.

    o   Very long file or pathnames could cause a crash if opened in
    the script editor. (PR#10402)



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.6.0

GUI CHANGES

    o   The console now handles cut and paste and mouse clicks in the
    input line in a more Windows standard way.  It also indicates
    insert and overwrite mode with different cursors.


FUNCTION CHANGES

    o   embedFonts() now accepts paths in 'GS_CMD' which contain spaces.

    o   The windows() device supports semi-transparent colours under
    Windows 2000 and later, for lines, fills and text.

    o   file.info() has an additional column 'exe' saying if the file
    is executable and if so what subsystem would be used to
    execute it.

    o   getWindowsHandle() now returns the handle as an external pointer.
        It no longer returns the process ID.

    o   system() (and hence shell()) now reports as the return value
    only the bottom 16 bits of process error codes to protect
    against executables with invalid error codes (such as -1 from
    fc.exe, PR#9868).

    o   pipe() in Rgui now runs the command through the shell specified
        by the COMSPEC environment variable, as Rterm has always done.

    o   l10n_info() reports the codepage in current use.

    o   dQuote() and sQuote() now use directional quotes by default
    under RGui.  You might prefer options(useFancyQuotes=FALSE)
    if the console font does not have these quotes: see the
    rw-FAQ.


INSTALLER

    o   The components now have two levels, and the Tcl/Tk docs can be
    deselected independently.  Only CHM help for Tcl/Tk is shipped
    (since Winhelp does not work on Vista).


PACKAGE INSTALLATION

    o   The undocumented use of 'OBJS' in src/Makevars.win has been
    removed: use 'OBJECTS' (as documented in 'Writing R
    Extensions') instead.

    o   PKG_CFLAGS, PKG_CXXFLAGS, PKG_FCFLAGS and PKG_FFLAGS now
    precede the system equivalents, as they have long done on
    Unix-alikes.

    o   FC is used rather than F95 for consistency with Unix-alikes.

    o   A file src/Makefile will now be ignored: use src/Makefile.win.
    (All packages known to build on Windows which have a
    src/Makefile also have a src/Makefile.win.)

    o   The src/Makevars flag SAFE_FFLAGS (documented in 'Writing R
    Extensions') is now available on Windows.

    o   There are dummy targets 'before' and 'after' in MakeDll which
    can be overidden in src/Makevars.win.

    o   graphapp is now in a separate DLL, so packages making direct use
    of it need to link against -lgraphapp.  This is the value of
    the macro GRAPHAPP_LIB that you can include in PKG_LIBS in
    Makevars.win (etc).  (GRAPHAPP_LIB is undefined in earlier
    versions, so this is backwards compatible).

    o   If the HTML Help Workshop fails when chm help is requested,
    package installation will continue with a warning.

    o   The C99 flag (-std=gnu99) is now used for compiling packages
    as well as R itself.

    o   If the TMPDIR environment variable is not set, Rcmd now tries
        the TEMP variable before setting TMPDIR to C:/temp.


BUILDING R

    o   Cross-building does now lazy-load the base package.

    o   The Lea malloc is now used by regex.c, src/extra/pcre and
    src/extra/xdr.  (This is for potential performance gains.)

    o   There is an experimental option BUILD=F2C for use when there is
    no Fortran compiler installed, but there is a compatible f2c
    installed.  Set CC in the environment to point to the C
    compiler to be used.  (Some binary builds of gcc omit the
    Fortran compiler, and commercial C compilers generally do not
    have matching Fortran compilers.)


OTHERS

    o   Some 64-bit versions of Windows (e.g. Vista 64) allocate 4GB
    user address space to each process that is large-address aware
    (as the R processes are), and on those systems the default
    memory limit will be the smaller of the amount of RAM and
    3.5GB.

    o   Rcmd INSTALL --docs=chm now means 'CHM only' and not 'all' as
    in earlier versions of R.

    o   The afm files in library/grDevices/afm are now compressed,
    which reduces the installation size by ca 2Mb.

    o   Installing a package with 'SaveImage: yes' no longer looks at
    the .Renviron startup files, and so takes R_LIBS from the
    environnment.  This is consistent with lazyloading a package.

    o   The preferred build environment is to use gcc >= 4.2.1,
    specified via BUILD=GCC4 in MkRules (the default).  Set
    BUILD=GCC3 in MkRules if you have gcc 3.4.5.  There is support
    for a gcc4 cross-compiler via the CROSS-GCC macro in MkRules.

    o   Rcmd build now uses 'tar --force-local' so it should work with
    Cygwin and MSYS tar as well as that in Rtools.  This replaces
    a workaround for Cygwin tar only.

    o   Rcmd config is now implemented.

    o   More Windows locale names set via LC_ALL etc work to set the
    message language, needed under Vista (which is picker than XP
    about such names, so LC_ALL=ru no longer works and LC_ALL=rus
    is required).

    o   There are now warnings on startup if locale categories cannot
    be set (a warning for LC_CTYPE may apply to all categories).
    This has become much more common under Vista.

    o   Single and double quotations are now rendered using directional
    quotes in text conversions of R help (as they always have been
    in HTML, CHM and latex versions of the help).  Note that
    directional double quotes are missing in FixedSys on most
    versions of Windows, and although the files will be rendered
    correctly in CJK locales using the builtin pager, they may not
    be in external pagers.

    o   Rcmd Rdiff now ignores the difference between smart single quotes
    and '.  This will probably only work correctly in single-byte
    locales.  (This is in addition to UTF-8 directional single
    quotes which the Unix version has for some time equated to '.)

    o   locale category LC_CTYPE="C" is now supported: it was previously
    remapped to 'en' (that is US English) due to problems in the
    MinGW runtime which have since been resolved.


BUG FIXES

    o   Pasting into the script editor would sometimes change fonts and
        lose line breaks. (Reported by Bob Muenchen.)




    **************************************************
    *                        *
    *          2.5 SERIES NEWS           *
    *                        *
    **************************************************


        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.5.1 patched

BUG FIXES

    o   .Platform$GUI would report "Rgui" when no GUI was present in
    R(D)COM.

    o   '=' within '-e expression' on the command line is no longer
    interpreted as setting an environment variable.



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.5.1

GUI CHANGES

    o   Within Rgui, completion can be turned on or off from the 'Misc'
    menu, and if completion is on, file name completion can be
    turned off (or back on again).

    The list of possible completions is removed once any further
    key is pressed.

    o   The "Paste commands only" context menu is slightly better at
    recognizing and removing prompts, e.g. from example() output
    or debug sessions.

    o   Using a modal widget from Rterm (e.g. select.list) is now far
    more likely to be forced to the front.


OTHERS

    o   file.access() has been rewritten using Win32 functions and
    should be more reliable, particularly on NT-based versions of
    Windows.  (PR#7234)

    o   The version number of the installer now includes the SVN
    revision number (which is handy for R-patched and R-devel
    daily builds).


BUG FIXES

    o   unlink() was not accepting wildcards.

    o   Since Windows will not unlink the current working directory,
    we change working directories before clearing the session
    temporary directory.

    o   The PDF version of the 'R Internals' manual was missing its
    indices.

    o   Rcmd BATCH did not accept input file paths with spaces in
    2.5.0.  (PR#9652)

    o   R_LIBS_SITE and R_LIBS_USER did not accept paths on network
    shares (starting \\).  (Rcmd INSTALL will not work with
    libraries on network shares, however.)

    o   path.expand() and other uses of '~' (e.g. filepaths) now take
    the value of the home directory from the environmental
    variable R_USER and not from the pre-2.0.0 definition of
    'home'.  This means that if HOME is unset, the value defaults
    to the personal directory and not %HOMEDRIVE%HOMEDIR.

    o   The setting of R_TEXOPTS has been moved from MkRules to
    doc/manual/Makefile.win.  This avoids error messages if 'latex'
    is not in the path.

    o   Rcmd INSTALL now sets up lazyloading earlier if explicitly
    requested in the DESCRIPTION file.  This is needed for
    packages that use 'methods' and need to load themselves to
    process their data.

    o   winMenuDel() was not automatically deleting sub-menus when a
    user menu was deleted.  (PR#9702)

    o   Rcmd INSTALL --docs=txt etc works (for a single type, except
    'chm' which is equivalent to 'all' nowadays).



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.5.0

GUI CHANGES

    o   In MDI mode there is a new View menu when the console is in
    focus which allows the toolbar and statusbar to be
    (de)selected, with the initial settings taken from the
    Rconsole file as before.  The default setting for the
    statusbar has been changed to 'no', as it is barely used by
    default.

    o   There is a new menu item in Rgui to 'Stop all computations'
    which kills all R computations immediately, skips any on.exit
    conditions and returns to the command prompt.

    o   The 'Install packages ...' menu item now only installs essential
    dependencies ('Depends' and 'Imports' but not 'Suggests'),
    using install.packages(dependencies = NA).

    o   The 'save as' file dialogs from the 'File' menu in a graphics
    window now add an appropriate extension to the file name.  To
    specify a file name without an extension, put the name in
    quotes, e.g.  "foo".  (As requested in PR#9336.)

    o   There is support in both Rgui and Rterm for object/file name
    completion via the TAB key using package rcompgen.  This can
    be disabled by setting the environment variable
    R_COMPLETION=FALSE when starting R (e.g. in ~/.Renviron).
    (Words within quotes are interpreted as file names, others as
    R object names.  Use library(rcompgen); ?rc.options for more
    details, including tuning the behaviour.)


FUNCTION CHANGES

    o   Sys.getenv() has been changed to use the C-level environment and
    not the Windows environment block for the process, for
    consistency with Sys.getenv("FOO"), Sys.setenv() and
    Sys.unsetenv().  A few Windows-specific environment variables
    (such as =C:) no longer appear.

    o   https:// URLs can be accessed by download.file() and url() if
    --internet2 is used (and provided the certificate is accepted as
    valid).

    o   bitmap() and dev2bitmap() will now accept paths in 'GS_CMD' and
    'file' which contain spaces (by converting to short path names
    inside the functions).

    o   system() gains an 'ignore.stderr' argument for consistency with
    Unix.  (This changes the order of arguments.)  The defaults
    have been changed to 'show.output.on.console=TRUE,
    invisible=TRUE' which make system() in Rgui more consistent
    with Rterm and with other ports of R.

    o   For consistency with Unix, system(intern=TRUE) and pipe(, "r")
    connections no longer capture stderr, only stdout (except on
    Rgui if ignore.stderr = FALSE, since Rgui has no separate
    stderr).


INSTALLER

    o   The Inno Setup installer now installs the desktop icon (if
    selected) for all users if run from an account with
    administrative privileges.


OTHERS

    o   This file (CHANGES) has been reformatted to be readable by the
        readNEWS() function.

    o   The C-level printf function used for printing has been altered
    to implement a round-to-even rule.  This means that output is
    more likely to be identical to that on Unix-alikes.

    o   R CMD INSTALL now installs by default into the first library on
    the library path if R was run in the current environment.
    Similarly, R CMD REMOVE by default removes from that library.
    R CMD INSTALL does a better job of removing its temporary
    directory.

    o   R CMD BATCH now prints the result of proc.time() at the end of
    the output, as it long has on Unix-alikes.

    o   More of the messages from the script editor are translatable.

    o   There is support for x86_64 cross-compilers as well as for ix86.

    o   mingw-runtime >= 3.11 is needed to build R.  (E.g., it provides
    isblank that was previously missing.)

    o   src/extra/trio has been updated to 1.12.

    o   malloc.c has been updated to version 2.8.3.  This version has a
    slightly different allocation strategy, and is likely to work
    a little better close to address space limits but may give
    more warnings about reaching the total allocation before
    successfully allocating.

    o   file.access() would give an error if asking about execute
    permission on Vista: the underlying C function has been
    changed to be incompatible with POSIX and we now work around this.

    o   Packages are now compiled with -O3.  (R itself has been since
    2.3.0.)

    o   Packages can have a 'cleanup.win' script to cleanup after
    configure.win etc.

    o   The toolset described in the R Installation and Administration
    manual for building on Windows is now partially available in
    an executable installer.

    o   The messages about being unable to update package and search
    index files when installing packages without sufficient
    permissions to update R are now suppressed (as Windows often
    reports inaccurately about file permissions).


BUG FIXES

    o   md5check.exe works again (it was throwing spurious differences
    after a compiler update).

    o   Some links in .chm help files were not working.  (PR#9586)

    o   rcmd Rdiff was not working (used by R CMD check).

    o   Workaround a Windows' mktime bug that affected the POSIXct to
    POSIXlt conversion during leap days in leap years prior to
    1970 in timezones which were on DST at the time.  (PR#9572)

    o   system() could have overflowed a buffer with a very long
    command line that contained quotes.




    **************************************************
    *                        *
    *          2.4 SERIES NEWS           *
    *                        *
    **************************************************



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.4.1 patched

BUG FIXES

    o   Using the AltGr key in the script editor was treated as a control key.
    This was fixed for the rest of Rgui in R 0.9.1, and unfixed by the
    contributed code implementing the script editor.  (PR#9430)

    o   Returning focus to a window (e.g. the script editor after
    saving) no longer changes the size or position, e.g. leaving a
    maximized window maximized.

    o   When reading from pipes (which includes pipe(open="r") and
    system() with intern=TRUE or show.output.on.console=TRUE in
    Rgui) it is now possible to interrupt the command and the Rgui
    console will be responsive whilst it is running (and R will
    take up far less of the CPU).  (Probably also fixes PR#7634.)

    o   menu.ttest2() in example package 'windlgs' was broken.

    o   CHM help is now converted with support for the \encoding{} section.

    o   etc/Makeconf was being left out of builds of the installer.



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.4.1

UNCATEGORIZED

    o   Inno Setup >= 5.1.7 is now required to build the installer.

    o   Reverted 2.4.0 change that required case-sensitive specification of
    commands to R CMD.

    o   The Simplified Chinese menu messages were in the wrong format,
    causing Rgui to crash on startup. (PR#9277)

    o   Menu messages are now available in a Spanish translation.

    o   The pointsize of fonts in the windows() graphics device may now
    be set to any positive integer.

    o   Building customized installers failed because the startup
    options weren't being handled properly.

    o   If Rconsole settings were such that R could not start properly,
    it crashed.  It now suggests starting with the --vanilla
    option, which now does not load Rconsole.  Additionally, an
    option --no-Rconsole has been added for completeness and
    debugging.

    o   shell.exec() now gives an error and a reason when it fails
    (rather than continuing silently as before).

    o   R CMD SHLIB again uses PKG_LIBS in files Makevars[.win] (it did
    not in R 2.4.0).



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.4.0

UNCATEGORIZED

    o   The language for menus and messages can be set in the 'Rconsole'
    file and (for future messages/sessions) from the GUI
    preferences.

    o   The initial setting for console buffering can be set in the
    'Rconsole' file and (for future sessions) from the GUI
    preferences.

    o   The installer can set defaults for MDI/SDI display, help style,
    and use of the --internet2 startup option.  Custom builds of R
    can change these defaults.  The standard build now defaults to
    CHM help.

    o   If CHM help is selected, but is not present (e.g. a package was
    cross- compiled on Unix), the help system defaults to text
    help.

    o   getGraphicsEvent() now writes its prompt to the standard output
    stream, so it can be captured by sink() or capture.output().

    o   getGraphicsEvent() now leaves the standard graphics window menus
    in place, so those functions are available while waiting for
    an event.

    o   iconv.dll has been updated to 1.11, which has some improvements
    for CJK languages under Windows (e.g. support for the Euro).

    o   Rcmd and R CMD check the name of Perl scripts, so errors like 'R
    CMD install' are detected.

    o   The default limit for --max-mem-size has been changed: see the rw-FAQ.

    o   The .chm files are now given a title identifying the package.

    o   There are new utilities 'Rcmd Sweave' and 'Rcmd Stangle' for
    processing of Sweave documentation.


INSTALLING PACKAGES

    o   It is now possible to use relative paths as 'lib' in
    install.packages(), not just absolute ones.

    o   Installing packages (in particular saving an image and preparing
    for lazy-loading and lazydata) is now done in a C locale for
    consistency with Unix.  (This will only possibly affect CJK
    locales, where some checks on the validity of symbols and
    strings might be locale-dependent.)

    o   There is a new file etc/Makeconf that provides an approximation
    to the Unix version and may help with src/Makefile's.


C-LEVEL CHANGES

    o   There is now a similar embedding interface to that under Unix,
    using Rf_initEmbeddedR / Rf_endEmbeddedR.

    o   The C-level *printf functions have been replaced by those from
    the trio library, which ensures a higher level of C99
    compliance without the need for lots of Windows-specific
    workarounds.

    o   Entry points which are hidden in libR.so on Unix are now also
    hidden in R.dll.  (Just over half the entry points are hidden,
    which speeds up loading.)

    o   It is possible to select (in MkRules) the type of debug symbol
    used, and this now defaults to 'dwarf-2' (which is more
    efficient than the previous default of 'stabs').  More parts
    of R are now built with debug symbols when DEBUG=T.

    o   The symbols in graphapp are now remapped to start with GA_, so
    any code making use of graphapp will need to be recompiled.


BUILDING R

    o   mingw-runtime >= 3.10 is required to build R (a bug fix in the
    handling of MBCS code is required).  This is enforced by a
    check in building Rpwd.exe.

    o   At the time of writing mingw-runtime-3.10 was not listed on the
    MinGW downloads page, but it is available from
    http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mingw/mingw-runtime-3.10.tar.gz?download


BUG FIXES

    o   The menu items for source and load/save workspace/history and
    drag-and-drop can now be used for paths on network shares
    (starting with \\).

    o   Using lines of more than 1000 chars in an R file in batch mode
    could crash R.

    o   If the input line limit (1024 bytes) was exceeded whilst pasting
    in, a byte was lost and the last byte input from the keyboard
    was repeated after the paste.

    o   The script editor would only load 1000 bytes if the locale in
    use was not the system locale.  (PR#9254)




    **************************************************
    *                        *
    *          2.3 SERIES NEWS           *
    *                        *
    **************************************************



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.3.1 patched

BUG FIXES

    o   winMenuAdd() could crash when too many menus were added.  (PR#8961)

    o   The data editor could crash when too much was pasted into it.

    o   dirname() converted paths involving network shares to forward slashes.
    (PR#8892)

    o   R could crash when very low on memory. (PR#8981)

    o   Due to a typo, R CMD Rd2dvi would not work with MiKTeX.

    o   Objects from Fortran 9X sources no longer need to be declared to
    R CMD SHLIB/INSTALL via OBJS in Makevars.win.

    o   There is a new option to make a .msi Microsoft Installer,
    intended for use by sysadmins doing automated installs.  See
    the 'R Installation and Administration Manual'.  (Thanks to
    David del Campo (Dept of Statistics, University of Oxford) for
    suggesting WiX and building a prototype installer.)

    o   It was intended that saving the GUI preferences would default to
    the home directory, but Windows only accepted paths with \
    separators at that point, ignoring others with no error
    message.



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.3.1

UNCATEGORIZED

    o   In the GUI preferences editor, the font size can be set to
    values not in the drop down list.  (The number of choices in
    the list has been increased.)  Font names not in the drop-down
    font list can be chosen.

    o   The MinGW C function wcrtomb was only working for Latin-1
    characters, and it had been replaced.  This affected the
    specification of 'pch' as a character, and some little-used
    aspects of plotmath.

    o   The installer generated a link in the Program menu to a
    no-longer existent help page.

    o   Opening a device via windows(resize="fixed") would sometimes
    fail with a message about 'outer margins too large'. (PR#8857)

    o   Sys.setlocale() interprets LC_CTYPE=C as a request for CP1252,
    as the startup code long has.  (This is necessary to avoid
    various crashes in the MinGW runtime code.)



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.3.0

UNCATEGORIZED

    o   There is an error handler for access violations and illegal
    instructions, which issues a traceback and error message, then
    returns to the top level.  This is switched off after 10 uses
    in a session.  Note that such errors can be the result of
    damage to the code or objects in memory, so it is advisable to
    save your work and restart R unless you know exactly what
    happened.

    o   There is a new function choose.dir() to choose a folder (as used
    for 'Change dir...' on the File menu in Rgui.)

    o   New function shortPathName() to convert names to DOS-style paths
    (8+3 names and no spaces).

    o   Added workaround to Windows graphics devices (windows(),
    win.metafile(), etc.) to allow callers to choose not to
    restore the focus to the console.  The interface to this will
    likely change in a future release.

    o   For compatibility with Unix, the following environment variables
    are checked for a writable directory for the R session
    temporary directory:

        TMPDIR TMP TEMP R_USER

    (the last will always succeed).  The changes are that TMPDIR
    is checked first and that the values are checked to be a
    directory.

    o   sprintf() now tries to ensure the output is C99-compliant, with
    e.g. 1.23e+08 not 1.23e+008 as given by MSVCRT.dll.

    o   Rterm now responds to Ctrl-C during input (Ctrl-Break always
    worked).  This means ^C is no longer echoed.

    o   The minimum value for --max-mem-size is now 32M (rather than 16M).

    o   file.info() now supports files bigger than 2Gb (the size was
    reported incorrectly before, since Windows' stat call only
    supports smaller files).

    o   The installer executable now has the file version information
    set appropriately.

    o   The DLL version number is now 2.xy.svn_revision.

    o   There is now aggressive protection of the setting of the FPU
    control word: it is reset to 64-bit mantissa and rounding mode
    before evaluating every expression.  This should prevent the
    implicit loading of DLLs changing to 53-bit mantissa, but has
    a small performance penalty.

    o   The file open dialogs now list *.ssc and *.S files in addition
    to *.q files as "S files".

    o   readClipboard() and writeClipboard() now support formats other
    than text.  A new function getClipboardFormats() reports on
    available formats.

    o   The Rgui console now supports '\r' in output as a
    non-destructive return to the left margin in the same way as
    Rterm (it was previously ignored).  Note that copy/cut of
    overtyped output will not necessarily pick up the visible
    layer of text.

    o   The "Edit|GUI preferences..." dialog now allows Rconsole files
    to be loaded as well as saved.  A new function loadRconsole()
    has also been added.


INTERNATIONALIZATION

    o   There is no longer a separate 'East Asian' version of R.dll.
    (Also, msvcp60.dll is no longer used as libmingwex now
    supplies suitable functions.)

    o   There is now MBCS support for the line editor in Rterm.exe.
    (Contributed by Haruki Koyanagi.)

    o   On NT-based versions of Windows, Unicode characters are used to
    draw on the console, pager, editor and windows() family of
    devices in multi-byte locales.  (This allows the user to
    select a locale other than the one Windows is running in, and
    with suitable fonts see the intended characters.  Menus and
    dialogs should also work in the selected locale.  A Windows
    quirk means that window titles (which includes the legends for
    the buttons used in the Preferences dialog box) use a font in
    the system locale.

    o   Added a few mappings from Windows locale names (e.g. "chinese",
    "chs", "cht", "ptb", "spanish", "esp", "esm", "esn") to
    language names.  There is still scope for confusion: LC_ALL=es
    is Estonian, and LANGUAGE=es is Spanish.

    o   Spanish (as used in Spain) has been added to the list of
    installation languages.


INSTALLING PACKAGES

    o   R CMD INSTALL will now clean up after interruption (by Ctrl-C, at
    least where supported by the shell).

    o   R CMD INSTALL --docs now has more options.

    o   Links to package 'methods' are now fixed up, and R CMD INSTALL
    no longer reports as missing links to 'datasets' and
    'grDevices' which would be fixed up.

    o   There is now support for compiling Fortran 90/95 code in
    packages: see 'Writing R Extensions'.

    o   Packages can now supply export files pkgname/src/pkgname-win.def:
    package 'stats' does so.

    o   The restriction on the number of dots in a package name (which
    stemmed from an undocumented restriction in ld.exe) has been worked
    around.


C-LEVEL CHANGES

    o   This version of R expects a complete double-complex BLAS to be
    available, and so customized (e.g. ATLAS and ACML) versions of
    Rblas.dll need to be rebuilt.  (The pre-compiled ones available on
    CRAN have been updated.)

    o   The ACML optimized BLAS can be used for LAPACK: see the 'R
    Installation and Administration Manual'.

    o   Since the Goto BLAS is no longer available for Windows, support
    for it has been withdrawn.

    o   The assembler exponentiation code has been updated to that from
    glibc 2.3.6.

    o   The import libraries libR.a, libRblas.a, libRlapack.a and
    libproxy.a are no longer used, as we now link directly to the
    corresponding DLL (except that a local version of libRblas.a
    is needed to build R.dll, since R.dll and Rblas.dll are
    mutually dependent).

    o   Import libraries are now made by default without -k (--kill-at).
    This might be relevant for contributed software using R's
    macros.

    o   The default optimization level for code in R (but not packages)
    has been changed from -O2 to -O3, since space taken by
    compiled code is no longer much of an issue.  This will result
    is a small performance increase.

    o   When making DLLs, the objects are no longer wrapped in an
    archive en route (this was needed to avoid line-length limits
    on an earlier shell).

    o   When making standalone Rmath, the static library is now
    libRmath.a and the import library is called libRmath.dll.a.


BUG FIXES

    o   iconv() was not always getting the current charset ("") right,
    especially if the locale was set in a running R session.

    o   gzfile() now always ensures that the underlying file is opened
    in binary mode (this is only an issue on Windows).  This
    solves some problems with reading compressed data files via
    gzfile().

    o   winMenuAdd() now has no limits on the number of menus or items,
    and names are now limited to 500 (not 50) bytes.

    o   Several fixes to Rproxy have been submitted by Thomas Baier, so
    it handles more types of objects.

    o   Outputting \b in Rgui deleted the last byte and not the last
    character.




    **************************************************
    *                        *
    *          2.2 SERIES NEWS           *
    *                        *
    **************************************************



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.2.1 patched

BUG FIXES

    o   Opening any window (pager/editor/windows() device) was resetting
    the LC_CTYPE in the locale to the system default.

    o   formatC() sometimes gave spurious leading spaces on Windows (PR#8337).

    o   Workaround in unlink() for a Windows-run-time problem with
    deleting directories with leading spaces in the name.

    o   tempdir() and tempfile() use all backslashes again (2.2.1 did not).

    o   When a graphics window was double-buffered, it would update too
    frequently while waiting for input, overloading some remote
    display utilities.



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.2.1

UNCATEGORIZED

    o   Using the latest binutils allows us to distribute Rgui.exe and
    Rterm.exe as large-address-aware (see the rw-FAQ Q2.9).

    o   The maximum C stack size for Rgui.exe and Rterm.exe has been
    increased to 10Mb (from 2Mb); this is comparable with the
    default on Linux systems and may allow some larger programs to
    run without crashes.

    o   Overwrite mode in the console now works for MBCS charsets.
    (Patch contributed by Haruki Koyanagi.)

    o   Input from the Rgui console was changing the letter 255 (ÿ in Latin-2)
    in the character set to letter 1.

    o   R CMD REMOVE in 2.2.0 removed the package(s) but failed to remake the
    indices.

    o   The windows() family of devices did not find the right character width
    in MBCS locales for non-ASCII characters.  (Pointed out by Ei-ji
    Nakama.)

    o   The installer was missing doc/html/index.html.

    o   Windows was sometimes incorrectly labelling times on BST as on GMT,
    e.g. "1972-07-01 01:00:00 GMT Standard Time".

    o   Closing the script editor could leave Rgui in an unstable
    state. (PR#8288)

    o   Support has been added for the ACML optimized BLAS: see the 'R
    Installation and Administration Manual'.

    o   winMenuAdd() had a limit of 16 additional menus but only
    allocated 10: it now has the limit of 16 as intended.

    o   Clicking on the left part of the MDI radiobutton in the
    preferences dialog failed.

    o   A different algorithm is used to find the R session temporary
    directory, one that is more likely to succeed.

    o   For compatibility with Unix, tempfile() names have a random hex
    suffix (and not a decimal one), and there are many more values
    to choose from.



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.2.0

UNCATEGORIZED

    o   The installer will be called R-2.2.0-win32.exe and by default
    install into (the local equivalent of) C:/Program
    Files/R/R-2.2.0.  The 'rw2010' notation has been dropped.

    o   file:// URLs are now interpreted by download.file(),
    download.packages() and url() in the same way as Mozilla-based
    browsers.  That is, the expected form is

        file:///d:/path/to/file

    with *three* slashes.

    o   library.dynam() temporarily adds the <package>/libs dir to the
    path so that dependent DLLs can be put there and found with no
    further action.

    o   The (D)COM support has been updated, and header files and an
    import library (src/gnuwin32/librproxy.a) are now installed.
    See the rcom package for usage.

    o   There are now Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (Traditional) and
    Russian translations of the Rgui menus.

    o   win.graph(), x11() and X11() now behave in the same way as
    windows() in respect of the xpinch, ypinch, graphics.record,
    gamma and windowsBuffered options.

    o   savePlot() now allows extensions '.emf' and '.eps'.

    o   The script editor menu no longer has an option to exit R (as the
    pager and graphics menus do not).

    o   Installation is now available in Finnish.

    o   install.packages() now detect members of a bundle which are in use
    and so skips the bundle (as it does for packages).

    o   MiKTeX is now recognised and the command-line set suitably for it.

    o   If the user chooses to register R during installation, a
    registry entry
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\R-core\R\{version}\InstallPath
    will be added.  Users require administrative privileges to
    create this key: for others, the same key will be put under
    the HKEY_CURRENT_USER root.

    o   The sample R_HOME/etc/Rprofile file has been renamed to
    Rprofile.site (the documented name for such a file for some
    years).

    o   mingw-runtime-3.8 is now required to build R (as it contains
    expm1).




    **************************************************
    *                        *
    *          2.1 SERIES NEWS           *
    *                        *
    **************************************************



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.1.1 patched

BUG FIXES

    o   The progress bar was being left behind when a download was
    aborted.  (PR#7964).  In addition, it now retains its position
    from one download to the next, rather than always moving back
    to the center of the screen.

    o   Added workaround in Sys.timezone() for Windows' confusion over
    the GMT timezone.

    o   Windows was sometimes leaving behind temporary files associated
    with anonymous file() connections - we now try to clean up
    after it.

    o   The default type of file for saving a script was not being set
    by the contributed C code for the script editor, so it
    reverted to the type of the last file dialog (PR#8018).

    o   formatC() with an exponential format sometimes did not line the
    fields up correctly.

    o   The 'Open Script' button shown from the pager toolbar in MDI
    mode was set up incorrectly and liable to crash R.  (PR#8060)

    o   seek(origin = "end") was repositioning to the wrong
    location. (PR#7896)



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.1.1

UNCATEGORIZED

    o   The installer allows a choice of languages.  Note that
    uninstallation will happen in the language chosen for
    installation.

    o   A menu item has been added for RSiteSearch().

    o   localeToCharset() was failing on some unknown (to the maintainers)
    locales such as

        LC_CTYPE=Chinese_People's Republic of China.936

    and that affected example().

    o   Translation of the filters in file load/save dialog spaces was
    being handled incorrectly by gettext, and is now not
    attempted.

    o   Attempting to plot repeatedly to the same metafile sometimes
    crashed R.  (PR#7821: it is unclear why Windows does not allow
    this.)

    o   Using the mouse scroll wheel in the data editor sometimes caused
    it to scroll out of range and crash or display garbage.

    o   The support for mitred lines encountered a Windows problem with
    a dramatic slowdown if more than 1000 or so segments were
    plotted in a polyline.  We now plot in bunches of 1000, which
    is less accurate but works around the Windows problem.

    o   There is a workaround for the Windows-specific problems that
    Sys.putenv(TZ="GMT") was not recognized by the OS and that
    Windows believes that there is such a thing as "GMT Standard
    Time".

    o   Inno Setup >= 5.1.2 is now required to build the installer.

    o   For some operations on windows() and related devices the first
    text drawn could be improperly sized. (PR#7860).

    o   R would crash when ESC was pressed during locator(). (PR#7873).

    o   seek() was not always reporting the correct position on files >
    2Gb. (PR#7879)



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.1.0

UNCATEGORIZED

    o   There is no longer a miniR distribution.

    o   Support for seek() on > 2Gb files has been added.

    o   You will be asked to select a CRAN mirror when
    downloading/updating packages unless options("repos") has
    already been set in your session, e.g. in your .Rprofile file
    or from the 'Select CRAN mirror' menu item.  (In batch use,
    not having set a mirror will lead to an error.)  BDR's
    supplementary collection is now included in the default
    options("repos"): if you want to include it explicitly set
    something like options(repos=c(some_cran_mirror,
    http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin"))

    o   There is a new item on the Packages menu to set repositories,
    e.g.  CRAN, Bioconductor, Omegahat.  You can modify the list
    (and its defaults): see the rw-FAQ Q2.9.  This supersedes the
    menu items for Bioconductor.

    o   The new (in R 2.0.0) graphics pars "lend", "ljoin" and "lmitre"
    are now implemented for the Windows devices.

    o   `Writing R Extensions' now documents how to interface a
    front-end directly to R.dll, and there are some new
    convenience functions for such front-ends.

    o   R CMD / Rcmd now set HOME if unset, e.g. for use in Rcmd check.

    o   The installer now offers the option (by default unchecked) of a
    `quick launch icon" for R.

    o   par(ask = TRUE) now takes input from the graphics window, rather
    than from the console.

    o   Rcmd REMOVE works more similarly to Unix, setting the default
    library from R_LIBS if the latter is set.

    o   install.packages() can install source packages as well as binary
    ones.

    o   shQuote() now defaults to type="cmd" on Windows.

    o   R can now be built with Unicode support on Win9x and WinME.  See
    src/gnuwin32/MkRules: this is currently experimental and not
    needed for standard builds.

    o   R can now be built with support for multibyte and variable-width
    character sets, e.g. for Japanese. See README.rw????.  The
    standard installer includes both single-byte and multi-byte
    builds.

    o   select.list() now looks up the current font size and chooses its
    window size based on that.  It allows multiple preselections
    if multiple=TRUE.

    o   The instructions for compiling packages from source and for
    compiling R itself have been moved to the R Installation and
    Administration manual; the PDF copy of that manual has been
    added to the Rgui Help | Manuals menu list.

    o   The way the command history works has been changed to be more
    like readline.  All the commands used in a session are kept,
    but only the last R_HISTSIZE (default 512) lines are saved.
    The environment variable R_HISTSIZE can be changed during the
    session (by Sys.putenv) as the current value is used.

    o   The font list in the Preferences screen has been expanded to
    include fonts used in `East Asian' terminals.

    o   A bug with font changing in Preferences introduced with the
    script editor in R 2.0.0 had been fixed.  This should fix
    PR#7271,7277,7749.

    o   Line widths on windows() devices (including win.print()) are now
    interpreted as multiples of 1/96" (or the pixel size if it is
    larger, as it may be for a screen device).  This follows the
    postscript() and pdf() drivers.  It is now possible to set lwd
    < 1 provided this corresponds to lines of at least one pixel
    width.




    **************************************************
    *                        *
    *          2.0 SERIES NEWS           *
    *                        *
    **************************************************



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.0.1 patched

BUG FIXES

    o   We work around reported bugs in Windows XP as to which
    characters are printable by attempting to print all
    non-control characters when using print().

    o   There are now facilities (documented in file
    src/gnuwin32/INSTALL) to add packages when building the R
    installer, and to rebuild a customized installer from the
    existing binary distribution.

    o   Tcl/Tk could crash Rgui during shutdown by trying to print an
    error message after the console had been shut down.  Such
    messages are now redirected to message boxes.

    o   bug.report() failed to open the internal editor.  We have
    changed it to use file.edit() to edit the report, with the
    consequence that there is no longer a "wait" parameter.



        CHANGES IN R VERSION 2.0.1

GUI CHANGES

    o   There is a new menu item to set a CRAN mirror.


BUG FIXES

    o   jpeg(), png() and bmp() were not handling background colours properly.

    o   It seems that on some systems (but not the maintainers') Mozilla
    1.7.3 requires \ not / in filepaths, so help(topic,
    htmlhelp=TRUE) now uses \.  (PR#7269) Hopefully no system
    requires / not \ !

    o   Changes to help() meant that help(topic, chmhelp=TRUE) was no
    longer working if `topic' was an alias.  (PR#7269)

    o   Recent changes caused (D)COM to sometimes go into infinite loops.

    o   Any change in the GUI preferences via the dialog box changed
    font (even if to the same font as before).  This is causing
    problems in MDI mode with toolbars (PR#7277), where real font
    changes are not working properly.

    o   Control keys in Tcl/Tk windows were not handled properly; Tcl/Tk
    interacted badly with Rgui in other ways as well.

    o   R CMD SHLIB gave spurious error messages for inputs like all.f
    and all.c.

    o   `make recommended' was not consulting the setting of WINHELP or
    HELP, so failed if HHW was not installed.

    o   We have increased the chances that installing a source package
    from an explicit path with spaces in will work, so e.g.

        R CMD INSTALL "/Documents and Settings/myname/Source Files/mypkg"

    will probably work -- it is still not recommended.  You can
    also get away with backslashes here, but forward slashes are
    safer.

    o   select.list(preselect=) was not working. (PR#7328)

    o   The graphics recording mechanism windows(record = TRUE) could
    cause memory corruption.




    *********************************************************
    *                           *
    *   News of 1.x.y and 2.0.0 is in file `CHANGES1'   *
    *   News of 1.0.0 and earlier is in file `CHANGES0' *
    *   These files are available in the source     *
    *   distribution.                   *
    *                           *
    *********************************************************