| For changes since the release of R 1.0.0 on 29 Feb 2000 | |
| see the file CHANGES | |
| rw1000 | |
| ====== | |
| The highlight colour used for help files in the internal pager can now | |
| be set in the file Rconsole. | |
| tempfile() can have argument `pattern' of length greater than 1. | |
| A bug in tab expansion in the console and internal pager has been | |
| corrected. | |
| link.html.help() is able to cope with packages with missing TITLE files. | |
| rw0990 | |
| ====== | |
| The console and internal pager now have horizontal scollbars. These | |
| are disabled (greyed out) if no text is obscured in the current view. | |
| Help menu items will be greyed out if the corresponding files are not | |
| installed. | |
| Many of the menu items now call internal functions and so are much | |
| faster, but produce nothing on the console. | |
| Help files will be displayed in the internal pager with headings | |
| in a contrasting colour. | |
| There are new functions winDialog() and winDialogString() to produce | |
| dialog boxes, and functions winMenu* (use ?winMenus) to manipulate | |
| user menus. | |
| Following Unix, the handling of help(, offline=TRUE) has been altered. | |
| It will be necessary to adjust helpPRINT.bat to set the TEXINPUTS path | |
| to find Rd.sty. TeX processing of these help files normally uses LaTeX | |
| package `ae' to handle Latin-1 characters: this can be changed by | |
| setting the environment variable R_RD4DVI. | |
| The conversion to text help no longer requires groff. | |
| rw0901 | |
| ====== | |
| It is possible to install packages from any directory (set PKGDIR on | |
| the make command) and to any directory (set RLIB on the make command). | |
| RLIBS is no longer accepted for the library directory: use R_LIBS | |
| (which has been preferred since 0.65.0). | |
| The code to set the `cra' parameter for a windows() device (and hence | |
| the base character size of symbols) is more robust. | |
| The code handling Ctrl-like keys has been changed and ought to be more | |
| robust (AltGr on Danish Windows NT used to misbehave.) | |
| savePlot recognises filename="clipboard" (or "") for wmf plots. | |
| The installer has always been version-specific and now tests it is | |
| being used for the right version. | |
| rw0900 | |
| ====== | |
| We made a determined attempt to quote paths which might contain spaces, | |
| and almost all cases work. Be careful with external unzip, pager and editor | |
| programs that these do handle quoted paths. | |
| Rterm can be interrupted by Ctrl-C as well as Ctrl-Break. Fast | |
| typing should not give problems in interactive use. | |
| Better formatting of math expressions in graphics labels, legends, ... | |
| (but only if font is True Type since it seems not possible to get | |
| per-char font metric information for raster fonts). | |
| Support for GIF format bitmaps has been removed, but support for PNG, | |
| JPEG and BMP has been added. This can be done via the File menu on the | |
| graphics window, savePlot() or dev.print to the new devices png(), bmp() | |
| and jpeg(), which can also be used directly. | |
| PDF versions of the (draft) manuals are available in file rw0900d.zip | |
| and install into rw0900/doc/manuals. These can be read in Acrobat | |
| Reader from the Manuals sub-menu of the Help menu provided they and | |
| the reader (http://www.adobe.com) are installed. | |
| The installer will install packages in the library directory if the | |
| installation directory path ends in rw0900. | |
| You can install packages by | |
| install.packages("/path/to/mypkg.zip", CRAN=NULL) | |
| rw0651 | |
| ====== | |
| New function savePlot() to save plots to wmf, gif or ps. | |
| There is now support for help via compiled HTML files (as used by the | |
| latest Microsoft products): set options(chmhelp=TRUE) to use this. | |
| You will probably need Internet Explorer 4 or later installed to use | |
| this, or you can install hhupd.exe from the windows/windows-NT/base/etc | |
| directory on CRAN. | |
| There is support for building Windows help files (as in Windows 95). | |
| Set options(winhelp=TRUE) to make this your preferred help system. | |
| Both compiled HTML files and Windows help are available for the | |
| standard packages. | |
| The new function update.packages() is supported if you have wget.exe | |
| (a copy is in the windows/windows-NT/base/etc/wget.zip on CRAN) or | |
| lynx.exe, from http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/lynxport.htm. | |
| On NT only, CPU times are returned by proc.time() (using a call to | |
| GetProcessTimes). | |
| Rotated text on a windows / win.* device is placed more accurately, | |
| especially for non-multiples of 90 degrees. | |
| A windows() device reports itself as `windows' not `X11'. | |
| getenv() now returns all the environmental variables. | |
| unlink() can now remove (empty) directories (but not using wildcard | |
| specifications). | |
| The complex LINPACK routines which were not included in the Unix | |
| versions of R are now omitted here. | |
| There is more support for (support of) ActiveX Automation via the | |
| Rproxy.dll: see the file front-ends/readme. | |
| As under Unix, .Renviron is first searched for in the working directory, | |
| then in the home directory. (It this case the home directory must | |
| be given by the R_USER or HOME environmental variable.) | |
| The sockets code is definitely working in this version, enough to support | |
| source.url and friends. | |
| options(pager="console") is set as the default if --ess is used (as it | |
| works better with Emacs). | |
| The rounding code has been re-written to be more accurate and to round | |
| to even as documented. | |
| The rw-FAQ is linked into the HTML help system. | |
| We believe the problems with re-sizing windows (especially on Windows 9x) | |
| have been solved. | |
| rw0650 | |
| ====== | |
| [ Because Guido Masarotto was ill for several weeks, rw0650 was only ever | |
| pre-released. ] | |
| There are many changes `under the skin' which are not reflected in | |
| user-visible changes, but either improve performance or will allow | |
| future enhancements. | |
| The environment variables have been changed: R_HOME is now R's home | |
| directory and R_USER is the HOME for the user which will be used by R | |
| (and defaults to HOME, if set, then to ${HOMEDRIVE}${HOMEPATH}, if that | |
| is set, then the working directory). (There are many other such | |
| changes in R: for example RLIBS becomes R_LIBS, although for the time | |
| being RLIBS is also recognised.) | |
| Saving a plot as postscript from the device menu will produce a | |
| portrait plot irrespective of the setting of ps.options(). | |
| Saving a plot as a metafile should be more reliable on machines which | |
| report incorrect information on the size of the screen. | |
| The new flag --no-environ suppresses reading .Renviron and is implied by | |
| --vanilla. | |
| When rterm is used non-interactively either --save or --no-save must be | |
| specified: these is no longer a default of --no-save (for consistency | |
| with Unix). | |
| More support for building R into other applications: see the examples | |
| in the front-ends directory of the source distribution. | |
| Interrupting by Esc or Ctrl-Break is handled internally by signals, so | |
| the `User Break' response will no longer appear, but in rterm ^C will | |
| be echoed. | |
| There is limited support for `tilde-expansion': file paths such as | |
| ~/rest will be expanded to ${HOME}\rest if HOME is set, or to | |
| ${HOMEDRIVE}${HOMEPATH}\rest if those variables are set. | |
| Using rterm either interactively or with --ess will be more responsive and | |
| use much less CPU time when waiting for input. Interruptions by Ctrl-Break | |
| or (under --ess, for use by ESS) Ctrl-C should happen immediately and be | |
| handled correctly. [On NT: problems with Win 98 were corrected for rw0651.] | |
| The installer can now install correctly in a top-level directory (e.g. | |
| C:\), fixing a bug in the unzip code used. | |
| rw0642 | |
| ====== | |
| There are few Windows-specific enhancements: rw0642 (and R-0.64.2) is | |
| a bug-fixing release. | |
| If options(pager="console") then files are listed in the console | |
| window, as happened prior to rw0640. | |
| On request, we have enabled `pagerstyle = singlewindow' in MDI mode, | |
| although we do not recommend this combination. | |
| The file HOME\.Renviron is read (it was HOME\Renviron, and the | |
| documentation used both names). Only the last line was successfully | |
| processed in rw0641, but all lines are in this version. | |
| unlink() on non-existent files no longer causes a crash. | |
| The new function win.version() will report details of the run-time | |
| Windows version, principally for use in bug.report(). | |
| bug.report() has a new argument wait: wait=FALSE gives a non-modal editor | |
| screen. | |
| Generally TAB will move between fields in dialog boxes, and return and | |
| escape will work (selecting OK and Cancel) in the Change Directory | |
| dialog box. | |
| The installer will allow several packages to be selected, and will | |
| install them in sequence. It should give more informative messages on | |
| some error conditions. Usually return will select Next or Finish, | |
| escape will select Cancel and B Back. | |
| There is a new target `make check' for running the standard tests and | |
| checking the standard packages (as on Unix). | |
| Saving the content of a graphic device as GIF should work again (under some | |
| circumstances, it resulted in a white image in rw064[01]). | |
| rw0641 | |
| ====== | |
| There is a choice of interface for Rgui: | |
| o SDI, single document interface. This is like the previous version, | |
| with separate windows for the console, graphics and pager(s). | |
| o MDI, multiple document interface. Here the console, graphics and | |
| pagers are subwindows of one main `frame' window. | |
| You can set your preference (and details of the MDI) in the Rconsole | |
| file: this can also be overridden on the command line by --mdi or --sdi. | |
| If you use multiple files in a single SDI pager, the (row) positions | |
| are remembered and re-used when you switch views in the pager. | |
| For MDI pagers, the pager size is chosen by the system, and only | |
| multiple pagers are supported. | |
| When pagers are re-sized the strategy is now to keep the middle line | |
| in the middle. | |
| The option `setwidthonresize' in Rconsole automatically generates an | |
| internal call to options("width") if you resize the console and change | |
| its width. This is the default, but we suggest you do not resize | |
| while R is outputting. | |
| The console, pagers and graphics devices now have right-click popup | |
| menus, and you can paste from a pager to the console directly. | |
| There is a new console menu item to show a file in a pager. This is | |
| intended to allow lines to be selected in an script file displayed in | |
| a pager and submitted to the R engine. | |
| `Busy' cursors are used where appropriate: a cross-hair cursor is | |
| used on a graphics device to indicate that locator() (or identify()) | |
| is in use. | |
| The file HOME\.Renviron is now read. This can contain environment | |
| variables in NAME=value form, one per line. This is useful for setting | |
| R_VSIZE, R_NSIZE, RLIBS and R_PAPERSIZE, for example. | |
| You can now paste in more to the console: the limit (which was 2048 | |
| chars) is now that of the clipboard. Pasting can take place whilst | |
| the console is busy. | |
| The command `make pkgcheck-pkgname' will do the equivalent of `R CMD | |
| check', that is run all the examples in the help pages for that package. | |
| unlink can now handle wildcards and a vector argument of length more than | |
| one. | |
| The inverse hyperbolic tangent functions asinh acosh atanh are now | |
| available in this version. | |
| rw0640 | |
| ====== | |
| R-0.64 uses platform-independent code for file handling. Files are | |
| displayed under a pager in a separate window rather than in the | |
| console. | |
| Environment variables can be set as NAME=value on the command line, | |
| including in a short-cut. | |
| Content of the pager and of the Rgui's console can be printed | |
| using File | Print. | |
| The help, latex and example files can be stored in zip files to save | |
| space; this is used for the base package. | |
| The menus are enabled/disabled and check-marked correctly under NT. | |
| We hope to have solved the 'rw0633 font dimension problem' shown | |
| under some NT versions. | |
| read.fwf works if you have Perl installed. | |
| help(, offline=TRUE) will work if you have latex installed and | |
| customize RHOME/bin/helpPRINT.bat | |
| The sockets code is compiled in, but we have not tested it. | |
| system() has new arguments `invisible' and `minimized'. | |
| rw0633 | |
| ====== | |
| The beginnings of a FAQ (RHOME/rw-faq). | |
| Programs can be launched from all shells: the full path to the | |
| executable is not needed. | |
| Configurable fonts in the graphics devices by the file Rdevga. | |
| Workspaces are saved in XDR format, and so can be shared with most | |
| Unix implementations of R. | |
| Printer and metafile graphics devices (?win.print and ?win.metafile). | |
| Consistent handling of start directory for dialogs and the working | |
| directory across versions of Windows. | |
| An improved and enhanced system() function (?system and ?shell). | |
| Windows-specific help files where necessary. | |
| Better support for ESS. | |
| Better support for the installation of pre-compiled packages | |
| (?link.html.help) | |
| rw0632 | |
| ====== | |
| The NT copy to the clipboard bug has been fixed. | |
| Help files use latin1 encoding (but, to see the difference, | |
| you must use a latin1 capable font; for this reason, now, as packed, | |
| the R console uses "Courier New"; if you don't like it, edit etc/Rconsole). | |
| rw0631 | |
| ====== | |
| There are two executables, Rgui.exe and Rterm.exe. | |
| NEW FEATURES | |
| Will run from NT command line. | |
| No `tricks' are needed for animated graphics. | |
| The windows are much more responsive. | |
| R commands can be interrupted by Esc. | |
| Rterm allows batch mode operation and can also be run in | |
| inferior-R-mode under NTEmacs. | |
| There is a history mechanism for graphics plots. | |
| Graphics can be copied to the clipboard. | |
| Commands history is saved between session (only by Rgui.exe). | |
| Saved images and user profile are called .RData and .Rprofile as under Unix | |
| (before they were RData and Rprofile). | |
| rw0630 | |
| ====== | |
| - Minor adjustment to reflect changes in R-0.63.0 (options, example,...) | |
| - Fixed a couple of minor bugs in the graphics device. | |
| - More control keys (some Emacs-like (crtl+a, crtl+e, crtl+k), and, by | |
| popular demand, crtl+c and crtl-v for copy and paste); take a look at | |
| the help/console menuitem. | |
| - Added support for Cygwin B20 (target remains Mingw32,i.e, no Unix | |
| emulation layer) | |
| - Access of global variables in R.exe from a dll should work (all the | |
| horrible name-mangling needed by `gnuwin32' - `var' in R.exe becames | |
| `*__imp_var' in a dll - is done automatically). | |
| rw0624 | |
| ====== | |
| New features: | |
| - The console can be configured (font, colours, dimensions). No fancy | |
| dialog (yet), but look at the rw0624/etc/Rconsole file. | |
| - help.start() now is implemented. Of course, you need the html | |
| documentation. | |
| Bugs fixed (I hope): | |
| - Alt+Gr problems on some European keyboards. | |
| - Focus is 'always' given back to the console. | |
| - Filters in the dialogs which ask a file-name. | |
| - round(..) now works as documented. | |
| - Some small modifications to the graphic device (position of text and | |
| clipping of lines was sometimes not exact). In addition, I changed the | |
| font to helvetica (for better consistency with the X11 device). | |
| rw0623 | |
| ====== | |
| A. News (with respect to rw0613) | |
| -------------------------------- | |
| (a) I rewrote the console using a portable toolkit (GraphApp, see | |
| http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~loki/graphapp). Now, output is buffered | |
| until some input is required. In addition, there are some command | |
| history support. For a mini help on the new console, use the | |
| help/Console menuitem. | |
| (b) I also rewrote the graphics device using GraphApp. Apart for the | |
| redraw (which seems faster) the GraphApp device is +/- equal to the | |
| one that you find in RJune. With respect to rw0613 the major | |
| improvements are: (i) it is a R0.62.x device,i.e., it supports | |
| multiple instances, resizing, copy,...(look to the dev.xxx functions); | |
| (ii) it supports plotting math expression; (iii) there is a new item | |
| in the menu which let to save the contents of the active device as a | |
| gif file; (ii) arbitrary line patterns in any width are supported. | |
| (c) Now, edit makes use of an external editor (the default one is | |
| notepad), i.e., it works as under Unix. | |
| (d) date() now works. In addition, proc.time(), and so | |
| system.time(..), works (but don't expect too much, you will get only | |
| the elapsed time). | |
| (e) IEEE math (Inf, Nan,..). | |
| (f) I used the GNU regex library. Hence all the | |
| code is GPL'ed. | |
| B. The new menubar | |
| ------------------ | |
| The menu bar contains the following item: | |
| File | |
| Source R Code -> ask for a filename and then send to the | |
| interpreter a source(filename) command. | |
| Load Image -> ask for a filename and then send to the | |
| interpreter a load(filename) command. | |
| Save Image -> ask for a filename and then send to the | |
| interpreter a save.image(filename) command. | |
| Edit | |
| Copy Paste Copy and Paste Select All | |
| Misc | |
| Kill current computation | |
| List objects -> send to the interpreter a ls() command | |
| Remove all objects -> ask for confirmation and then send to | |
| the interpreter a rm(list=ls()) command | |
| Graphics save as Postscript -> ask for a filename and then send to the | |
| interpreter a dev.print(...) command | |
| save as gif -> ask for a filename (extension must be | |
| .gif) and then save the current plot as gif | |
| Help | |
| Console -> mini help on the console | |
| R language -> ask for a topic and then send to the interpreter a | |
| help(topic) command | |
| Apropos -> ask for a topic and then send to the interpreter a | |
| apropos(topic) command | |
| About | |
| Observe that some of the menu items just send to the interpreter a | |
| command. This means that these items are disabled when the interpreter | |
| is waiting for the completion of a previous command,i..e, when you | |
| have the ''continuation'' prompt. On the other end, under normal | |
| editing (prompt='>'), since the current line is saved and then | |
| restored you can, for example, type part of a command, ask for some | |
| help, and then complete your command. | |
| C. Printing | |
| ----------- | |
| To avoid questions: printing is not directly supported (yet). | |
| To print the content of the console you must: | |
| a) select the text; | |
| b) copy it to the clipboard; | |
| c) paste it in some word processor or editor which can print. | |
| To obtain a good copy of your graphs you can: | |
| a) save it as postscript and then print on a ps printer (or play with | |
| it using ghostscript); | |
| b) save it as a gif and then print it using one of the many programs | |
| which support this format (image manipulation programs, word processors, | |
| internet browsers,...). | |
| If you give the focus to a graphic window, you can also copy it to | |
| the clipboard using the alt+print keys. But this is the standard | |
| Windows command and you will get also the window's decoration. So | |
| this is useful only to get a "draft" copy of the graph. [however, I | |
| find quite effective to open a word processor in which to paste | |
| command, console output and graphs. Indeed this is the way I ask my | |
| students to work (of course, they must also write comments!)]. | |
| [...] | |
| H. Bugs (known) and misc. observations. | |
| --------------------------------------- | |
| (a) As always, the English of this README. | |
| (b) de() doesn't work anymore. If someone needs it, I can try to include | |
| the old one (or try to write a portable version of it using GraphApp). | |
| (c) edit(...) doesn't work properly under Win3.1/Win32s. | |
| (d) system(...) is quite limited (popen under MsWindows is a | |
| nightmare). | |
| (d) To use this version under Win32s you need a recent version of | |
| Win32s (I have only tested with the last one that can be found at | |
| ftp://ftp.microsoft.com). | |
| (e) Only the mouse can be used to select the text in the console. |