RKward

RKWard is an open source software designed to become a transparent and easy to use interface to the R language.

RKward will not only provide a convenient user-interface, but also take care of seamless integration with an office suite.

What is new in this release:

• Add option to force-close a graphics window
• Add plugin for subsetting data.frames by rows or columns
• On the Windows platform, add an new (experimental) binary startup wrapper (rkward.exe)
• Revert to building R packages form source on Mac OS X by default (controllable via compile-time option)
• Fixed: lattice plots would not be added to the plot history, correctly, for some versions of lattice
• Fix crash when trying to print, and neither okular, nor kpdf are available
• Added support for loaded namespaces that are not attached to a loaded package
• Pluginmaps can specify their "priority". Pluginmaps with low priority will not be added automatically, when found.
• Pluginmaps can other pluginmaps based on their id (for cross-package inclusion)
• Added new element for dynamic version checks within a plugin (R and RKWard versions, only, so far)
• Add guard against accidental usage of the standard distributed pluginmaps in a later version of RKWard (installed in parallel)
• Easier (de-)activation of RKWard plugin maps using checkboxes (Settings->Configure RKWard->Plugins)
• Broken or quirky .pluginmap files are reported to the user, completely broken maps are disabled, automatically
• Implement basic dependency handling for plugins / pluginmaps
• Added support for the upcoming R 3.0.0
• Added logic element to switch between several target properties (or fixed values) based on the value of a condition property
• Sort plugin gains option to sort data.frames by more than one column at a time, and options for type conversion
• Add in-application debug message viewer (targetted at (plugin) developers)
• Add setting to customize initial working directory
• Windows only: Add UI-checkbox for R's "internet2"-option
• New functions getString(), getList() and getBoolean() for fetching data in plugin scripts
• Boolean properties now return a numeric, not labelled representation of their value, by default. es should be unaffected.
• Added GUI element for entering a set of options for an arbitrary number of items
• Reduce CPU usage of pluings while idle
• Fix conversion from Numeric to Factor in the data editor
• In the data.frame editor, columns containing invalid values are now highlighted in red
• Fixed: If none of the previous plugin maps could be found on startup, re-add the default
• Added GUI element for entering matrix or vector data in plugins
• Improve key handling while editing factor levels in a data.frame
• Added utiltity function rk.flush.output()
• RKWard is now categorized as Science/Math/Numerical Analysis in its .desktop file
• Fixed: Yet another fix for hard-to-read function argument hints
• Fixed: Device history was not working with more recent versions of ggplot2
• Fixed: Option to include suggested packages in install was mis-labelled "install dependencies"
• rk.set.output.html.file() gains argument to allow addition of custom content to the html header

What is new in version 0.6.0:

• Fixed: Entering "0" as propabilities (quantiles) vector in distribution plugins would cause error message
• Preview device windows will display some status information (most importantly, warnings or errors)
• Most plot plugins gain options to control margins and tick label orientation
• Added option for installing packages from source (implicitly enabled on Unixoid platforms)
• Fixed: Wrong handling of carriage returns ('r') in the console window
• Fixed: Spinboxes had wrong initial values
• Omit comments on missing function calls in dialog code windows (e.g., if prepare() is unused, there's no "## Prepare" in the output either)
• Output markup is now more XHTML compliant and easier to parse
• Also save cursor position, folding, etc. for scripts. Note: Implementation details may be subject to change.
• New function rk.list.labels() to retrieve column labels in a data.frame
• rk.get.label() will now return an empty string ("") instead of NULL, in case no label is assigned
• Fixed: Changed configuration settings would not be saved for script editor
• Fixed: One character missing in R commands on lines longer than 4096 characters
• Fixed: "Next"-button in wizards would remain enabled while settings are missing on a page
• Fixed: Dynamic pages in a wizard would cause a layout bug on the first page
• Do not offer to restore individual removed columns of a data.frame opened for editing
• Fixed: Plot history and graphical menus broken in some cases with R 2.15.0
• Fixed: If the rkward package was loaded in a plain R session, q() and quit() still work
• combined all Wilcoxon/Mann-Whitney-tests in one plugin (from previously two separate plugins)
• Added polyserial/polychoric correlations to correlation matrix plugin
• Added more compression options to the "Save objects as R code" plugin
• Added MacPorts support, see README.MacPorts and bundle build script in the macports folder
• Added dynamically generated table-of-contents menu to output document
• Fixed: Would not show output of system() commands to stderr on the console (on Unix-like systems)
• Allow some markup inside elements in plugins, and auto-add breaks only for duplicate newlines.
• Reorganized t-test plugin, and add support for single sample t-tests
• Box plot plugin gains more options for adding means
• Fixed: Function argument hints for the second half of the parameter list would not be quoted, correctly
• Improve keypress handling issues in the R Console, when the cursor or a selection is outside the editable range
• Fixed: Failure to open workspaces with non-latin1 filenames from the command line
• Fixed: Saving / restoring workplace layout would fail when saving to directories with unusual characters
• Only install translations which are at least 80% complete (not counting strings in plugins, which are not yet translatable)
• When asking for workspace file to open, use appropriate file filter
• When configured to ask for workspace to open on startup, don't prompt to save, first
• Fixed: potential crash when clicking "Select all updates" in the package installation dialog
• Fixed: potential crash in object name completion under certain conditions
• Simplified the "Sort Data" plugin, and added a help page
• Fixed: On Windows, detached windows would sometimes be positioned with the menubar outside the upper screen edge
• Added GUI support for inspecting the call stack during debugging
• The backend executable is no longer linked against KDE libraries
• Objects, which are not acceptable in a varslot, will still be shown, there, with a warning

What is new in version 0.5.7:

• Fixed: Would not system-defined text color for argument hints
• Do not treat arrays (which are not a matrix) as hierarchical named objects in the object browser
• Do not analyse more than 100000 name child-objects per object (avoids hangs on such extreme data)
• Fixed: Problems with using mclapply() inside RKWard
• Offer to add a new library location, automatically, if location selected for installation is not writable
• Reworked package installation / update dialog
• Fixed: Integrated help browser would not update navigation history when following page internal links
• Documentation on writing RKWard plugins is now accessible, locally
• The file filter for R script files is now configurable, and includes *.Rhistory, by default
• More obvious coloring of variable entry fields requiring user input in plugins
• Default size of the code display in plugin dialogs has been increased
• Removed support for downloading plugins using GHNS
• Added support for RKWard plugins shipped inside R packages
• Fixed: PDFs and many other types of documents linked from help pages would not be opened, correctly
• Added support R 2.14.x
• Removed option to set options("printcmd")
• New option to run arbitrary (setup) commands in each session
• Added new pseudo graphics device "rk.printer.device" to provide printing via the KDE printer dialog
• Fixed: Printing was broken when kprinter is not available
• Support the results list new help.search() in R 2.14.x, which includes vignettes and demos
• rk.edit.files() and rk.show.files() gain parameter "prompt", which can be used to suppress user prompt
• Added function rk.demo(), which is similar to demo(), but opens the example script in a script editor window
• Fixed: Some plugin dialogs would not become visible, or be shown in very small size, with some window managers
• Fixed: Potential crash when using context menus with "focus follows mouse" window activation policy
• Added shortcut Ctrl+Enter to insert a line break and submit from a script editor
• Reduce CPU usage while idle
• Bar plot, dot chart, pie chart, and Pareto plot plugins gain more tabulation options
• rk.results() now prints rownames, where appropriate
• "frame" elements in plugins can now be made checkable
• Disabling or hiding a plugin component makes it non-required, implicitly
• Box plot gains option to dogde grouped boxes
• Simplify internal handling of system() and system2() output
• Simplify code produced by several plugins
• Fixed: Occasional duplication of first letter of keyword, when using "Copy lines to output" from the console window

What is new in version 0.5.6:

• Fixed: Would crash when searching for a term with quotes in the help search window
• Add simple man page for command line options
• Fixed: Potential crash when creating plots from a tcl/tk based GUI
• Fix compilation on FreeBSD
• Replace the R console's "Copy selection cleaned" action with "Copy commands, only", which will omit any non-command regions in the copy
• Add "Copy lines to output" action to copy highlighted lines from the R console or script editors to the output window
• R commands and their output can be "carbon copied" to the output window
• On Windows, RKWard will detect, and offer to disable "native" file system dialogs
• Object browsers that show only the global environment now hide the ".GlobalEnv" item
• Fixed: Function argument hints would not be shown in some corner cases
• Added function rk.print.code() to write highlighted R code to the output window
• Box plot plugin gains support for grouped outcome data
• Fixed: Pressing Ctrl+C would not reset syntactically incomplete commands in the R console
• Crosstabs N to 1 plugin gains options to compute proportions and margins (thanks to Andres Necochea)
• Added convenience R function rk.list() to allow simplification of plugin code
• Added stack-based window switching using Ctrl+(Shift)+Tab; this replaces the old "Next Window" and "Previous Window" actions
• Fixed: Graphics device windows would disappear when trying to attach them to the main window with some versions of Qt
• Fixed: tcl/tk widgets would lock up after running commands in the R Console
• Provide a template for bug reports, containing standardized information on the RKWard setup in Help->Report Bug...
• When loading a (local) workspace, change the working directory to the directory of the workspace (configurable)
• Include the sidebar position of tool windows when saving / restoring the workplace layout
• "Pending jobs" tool window is not longer shown in the bottom sidebar by default
• Support removing individual tool windows from the sidebars, completely
• Add an action to interrupt all (current and pending) commands
• Fixed: When saving the workplace while closing the session, the workplace layout would not always be saved correctly
• File browser context menu gains many more KDE standard actions (KDE 4.3 and above, only)
• Auxiliary binaries rkward.bin and rkward.rbackend are no longer installed into /usr[/local]/bin/ on Unix
• Fixed: Object name completion would abort early in the script editor with KDE 4.4
• Support function argument hinting for R primitives
• Support package namespaces in object name completion and workspace browser
• Support S4 slots in object name completion and workspace browser
• More correct handling of quotes in object name completion
• Support plot history for ggplot2 plots
• Be less pro-active about fetching structure information on R objects in the workspace
• Allow to browse arbitrarily deeply nested environments in the object browser

What is new in version 0.5.5:

• Fixed: Crash when several environments on the search path have the same name
• Re-organize the default toolbar actions of the main window
• Detached windows are now restored in detached state when restoring the workplace layout
• Workplace layout is now saved in a separate file, instead of in a hidden object inside the .RData file
• Added R functions rk.save.workplace() and rk.restore.workplace() to save / restore a set of document windows
• RKWard now tries to detect, when a workspace has been moved to a new directory, and adjust the paths restored script editor windows, accordingly
• Fixed: Potential crashes when changing length of a data.frame that is currently opened for editing from R code
• All pages in the package installation dialog now support sorting and keyboard search
• Fixed: Converting from factor to string in the data editor set values to numeric, internally
• Allow entering factor labels instead of only numbers, when editing factors in the data editor
• Display logical values as "TRUE" and "FALSE" in data editor, and accept "T"/"TRUE"/"F"/"FALSE" in addition to "0"/"1" while editing
• Add support for R functions loadhistory(), savehistory(), history(), and timestamp ()
• Do not load .RData file from current directory by default (configurable)
• Fixed: On Windows, a wrong locale for LC_NUMERIC would be applied, resulting in malfunction of pdf() and postscript()
• Fixed: Did not use system configured background color in data editor
• Fixed: New columns would be always be added to the right, instead of to the left, in the data editor
• Fixed: Would crash when trying to edit 0 row data.frame
• Fixed: Output generated by external processes (system()) was not shown on the console
• Fixed: Converting a variable to factor in the editor would drop existing levels, silently, and lead to NAs
• Fixed: Cursor would keep jumping to the end, when typing a filename in the filename selection field in plugins
• Fixed: Submit button would not become enabled in "Basic Statistics" plugin
• Moved automated testing framework moved to a dedicated R package "rkwardtests", and added documentation
• Support pasting to the middle of the current command line in the R Console
• Better handling of script-editor commands while the R Console is busy
• Correct interleaving of multi-line commands and the corresponding output in the R Console
• Fixed: Portions of multi-line commands entered on the R Console would be run twice under some circumstances
• Fixed: Lockups or crashes when using packages RGtk2 or rJava on the X11 platform
• Fixed: R task callback handlers were not called
• GUI frontend and R backend now run in separate processes
• Re-write of large portions of the R embedding code
• Fixed: Did not respect system settings for tooltip background color in some styles
• Fixed: Installation would continue, seemingly successfully, even if R support libraries could not be installed
• Fixed: Function argument hints would sometimes persist after closing a script window
• Fixed: Would fail to analyse structure of ReferenceClass-objects
• Fixed: "Vector" mode in "Paste special" action did not work correctly
• Attempt to save workspace on crashes
• Also try to relay SIGABRT and SIGILL to the proper signal handlers
• Removed the remainder of the PHP scripting backend
• Fixed: Would crash on tcl/tk events in some cases

What is new in version 0.5.3:

• Fixed: Windows->Activate->Window left / right actions were always disabled
• File browser window saves settings on exit
• Several windows-specific bugs were fixed
• Plugin dialogs are shown with a larger initial size
• Add close buttons to each tab in the main document view area (not available in KDE 4.0)
• Make "print", "export as HTML", "dynamic word wrap", and "increase/descress font size" available for the console window
• Use a native menu, instead of the default TclTk-menu
• Fixed: Newly created variables were not properly updated when closing and re-opening the editor
• Added "paste special" action to script editor and console for pasting R vectors and matrices from spreadsheets
• Fix order of menus for detached windows
• File->Open R Script File now allows to specify the character encoding to use
• Fixed: No entries were added the recent script/workspaces actions after "save as"
• Initialize the output file with an appropriate encoding specification
• Add SVG support to export (graphics) plugin
• Add basic settings format settings for graphics output
• Convert all plugins to use ECMAscript instead of PHP; RKWard no longer depends on PHP
• Fixed: Frequent crashes while running automated plugintests
• Fixed: Filenames without extension would not be shown in file dialogs
• Fixed: Calling "fix(my.fun)" would remove comments
• Fixed: Removing "@CRAN@" from the repositories would break package installation

What is new in version 0.5.2:

• Support was added for the new dynamic help system in R 2.10.0.
• Several features were added, including configurable toolbars, auto-closing plugin dialogs, and a Stata import plugin.
• Several bugs were fixed.

What is new in version 0.5.1:

• New command line option "--evaluate " mostly for the purpose of automated testing
• Remove support for R 2.6.x and earlier
• Add basic checks for a correct installation of the RKWard resource files
• Remove "What to expect" dialog at startup
• Make keyboard shorcuts configurable
• Add option to add only single line commands from script editor to the console history
• Add action to change working directory to that of the current script file
• Fixed: No warning was shown, when an open script file was changed on disk, externally
• Fixed: Opening most file types (e.g. PDF) from the help browser was broken
• Fixed: Make built-in editor work again for file.edit ()
• More plugins now write a header to the output window
• Add convenience function "makeHeaderCode()" for use inside plugins
• Adjust some icons
• Plugins can be invoked from R code (mostly for internal purposes)
• Add "Run again" link for plugin generated output
• Fixed: All objects in .Globalenv would be revisited if a single object was added / removed
• Fixed: Screen device in rkward was not seen as interactive by R

What is new in version 0.5.0d:

• Fixed: Container of detached windows would sometimes remain after reattaching
• Fixed: Global toolbar style was not honored
• Fixed: Auto-scroll missing in progress dialogs and data editor
• Fix jumping toolbar
• Fixed: Several harmless warnings were silenced
• Fixed: Argument hints would always stay on top regardless of focus
• Fix crash when reaching bottom of command history in context sensitive search
• Fix crash while inserting rows in a data.frame with string variables