R's developers have made the right decision. Like it or not, my company colleagues and "customers" provide me most data in Excel. I want to use R to analyze/plot/etc the data, and sometimes to provide them R applications to do the analyses themselves instead of the current Excel analyses (sic) that they do. I am not paid to tell them to go look elsewhere for help (especially when it can be difficult to convince them to work with me in the first place -- but that's a much more difficult "cultural" issue).
Like it or not, Excel is the most widely used data analytical/graphics package in the world. In the business world, we have to deal with such realities. Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Statistics -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Scionforbai Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 11:37 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; r-help@r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] Import from excel 2007 I just wonder: why should R and its community try to support such an awful program, with its protected formats and unmantained features/bugs? I mean, from both philosophical and technical point of view: R is free software and should rather try to be 'viral' than to compete. It already has the strength, in my humble opinion. You want to use excel: go and use, you payed for it, so you have a commercial support elsewhere. You are not able to communicate with other applications? That's the fault of excel, not of R, which is free software and uses well documented formats. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
