Well, there's always RExcel to get all your R stuff into something M$ Ruffice can understand. And they're even working on a Word link if I got it right.
Cheers Joris On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com>wrote: > chrish...@psyctc.org wrote: > >> I've changed the subject line a bit here as Max is asking such a >> fundamental question. >> >> Max Kuhn sent the following at 01/05/2010 19:22: >> >> >>> Chris, >>> >>> >>> >> ... >> >> >> >>> Why is it R Core's job to fulfill your wants and desires? I have a >>> hard time thinking that very busy people would spend extra time doing >>> something that they may or may not have a direct need for. Write it >>> yourself or get a group of people together to do it. That what we did >>> with odfWeave (for better or worse). If the task is beyond what you >>> feel you can do, fund it. >>> >>> >> >> Ouch. OK. I'm hugely grateful for your work on odfWeave Max and sorry >> that Open Office isn't a solution for me at the moment. However, I >> don't think I'm being unreasonable or selfish. >> >> 1) Certainbly it's not R core's job to fulfil my wants and desires and >> they will have ways to discuss what would strengthen R for lots of us. >> Clearly I can submit a wishlist item to the R bugzilla and I should but >> that's very particulate: how can the team find out of wishes are common >> or would help increase use of R? >> >> There are files of key R core team members' wish lists on the R site but >> almost none relate in any way to output and some appear to be years old. >> I've worked with R (about 14 years I think) and as I look particularly >> at the recent release notes, I see a lot of work went into changing the >> help system which is one sort of output from R and a huge amount of work >> went into transitions in the object orientation (S3 to S4). I think >> that what I am suggesting is about a core issue of seeing >> a set of object properties for numeric output as including insertion of >> tabs, ideally as providing flexible presenting and viewing of all >> matrices, data frames and lists, and, some day, cross linkage of >> graphics into output. Ideally, as with the capacity of R to export its >> graphics in a number of formats, I'd love to see this capitalising on >> the work you have done for ODF and others have done for TeX etc. >> >> These strike me as central object handling issues, not things that >> should for ever be offloaded to the libraries/packages. >> >> > > I don't think that because something is important it needs to be in the > part of R that R Core handles. The things that need to be there are things > that can't be anywhere else. Things that can be elsewhere should be > elsewhere, because the more that is in base R, the more time R Core spends > on maintenance, and the less time on development of base R or on the other > things we do (e.g. the things our employers pay us to do). > > We don't always follow this rule: in some cases, things that could be > elsewhere are in base R because an R Core member doesn't mind taking on the > maintenance, and it is easier to put them in base R than to create a new > package for them. (Sweave is an example of this; there has been talk of > moving it out of the base, but that hasn't happened yet.) > > But I don't think any members of R Core use any of those word processors > called MS Word, and I don't see any need for core support for producing > output for them. R already produces structured objects with all the > semantics of XML objects (though it doesn't use that format to store them); > it is simply a matter of deciding what format you'd like things to be > displayed in, and then figuring out how to produce something in that format > in a way that MS Word will understand. The first task is definitely > something within the range of an R user. Getting it into some version of > .doc or .docx or whatever is not at all easy, but it really has very little > to do with R. It would make more sense to ask Microsoft to handle that part > than it makes to ask R Core to do it. > > Duncan Murdoch > > > 2) Do it myself: I wish! I'm a terrible programmer and work 50-70 hoursa > week in my main jobs (I'm so outspoken here at the moment partly > > because I'm off work post-op.) I'm quite a good psychotherapist and >> capable of working in several different modes of psychotherapy and with >> individuals, couples, groups and families and I'm a fairly competent >> researcher and clinical director. I wish I'd been born or learned to be >> a better programmer as I wish I'd been more musical and able to dance >> but I'm not. I can contribute ideas, help debug things and hope to >> contribute much more of this when I retire from the main jobs. I have >> no links with programmers at work nor in my university location so I >> have no colleagues with whom I can form a team to do this. >> >> 3) Pay for it myself: I was pretty ignorant about ways of paying for >> R things. I can't see me persuading my NHS employer to pay as we're >> contracting rapidly and don't officially use R. If we had the >> outputting I'm describing in the R core I think I might be able to get >> us to stop paying some thousands of pounds a year for SPSS and might be >> able to shift say 1k in gratitude to R though NHS purchasing rules don't >> make that easy. (That, I think, is one of the huge challenges to open >> source s'ware, if someone can tell me about ways to get organisations >> who have to justify their purchasing as we do manage to pay for open >> source development, I'd like to hear and I'll try to make it happen.) >> >> Prompted by your Email I have found the R project membership form and >> 'faxed it off with payment and will probably donate some more on top of >> that 25 euros. However, I would love a way to make a donation >> that would encourage someone to do this bit of work but I'm currently >> unlikely, personally, to have the money to pay for all that's needed. >> >> Hope this helps explain my position. I'm genuinely keen to hear others' >> views. Very best to all, >> >> Chris >> >> >> >> > ______________________________________________ > 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. > -- Joris Meys Statistical Consultant Ghent University Faculty of Bioscience Engineering Department of Applied mathematics, biometrics and process control Coupure Links 653 B-9000 Gent tel : +32 9 264 59 87 joris.m...@ugent.be ------------------------------- Disclaimer : http://helpdesk.ugent.be/e-maildisclaimer.php [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ 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.
