Programming Graphical User Interfaces in R

Focusing on graphic user interfaces (GUIs) within the R language, this book shows programmers and users how to develop their own GUIs, enabling them to interface with other languages. The text opens the possibilities of R’s huge and growing set of statistical methods. The authors cover four different packages for writing GUIs: gWidgets, RGtk2, Qt, and Tcl Tk. Supported by a package in CRAN that contains all of the code along with additional examples, the text is filled with numerous examples ranging from the very simple to detailed illustrations of how to code actual interfaces.

Programming Graphical User Interfaces with R introduces each of the major R packages for GUI programming: RGtk2, qtbase, Tcl/Tk, and gWidgets. With examples woven through the text as well as stand-alone demonstrations of simple yet reasonably complete applications, the book features topics especially relevant to statisticians who aim to provide a practical interface to functionality implemented in R. The book offers:

• A how-to guide for developing GUIs within R
• The fundamentals for users with limited knowledge of programming within R and other languages
• GUI design for specific functions or as learning tools

The accompanying package, ProgGUIinR, includes the complete code for all examples as well as functions for browsing the examples from the respective chapters. Accessible to seasoned, novice, and occasional R users, this book shows that for many purposes, adding a graphical interface to one’s work is not terribly sophisticated or time consuming.