[Qgis-user] manageR feature requests

[Carson Farmer]

Hi Ricardo,
> Having read on a previous post that the author of manageR is taking
> feature requests, I'd like to leave a couple :)
>   
Great!
> 1 - The possibility to import non ASCII characters into manageR. In my
> opinion this would be a huge improvement for us non-native english
> speakers. I know Carson is aware of this issue, but I can't resist
> ringing it again ;)
>   
This might be a bit tricky, as I can't seem to get non ascii characters 
into R via Rpy. So it's not that manageR doesn't like the non ascii 
characters, is that rpy doesn't seem to like them (but I'll keep looking 
into this).
> 2 - It would be great if the R help would work under manageR. In fact
> I am sure that the help function is the one I am using most often when
> doing stuff in R and the one I miss the most in manageR.
>   
This is something I'm working very hard on, but haven't yet found a way 
to make this work nicely...
> 3 - I'd also like the ability to choose to dock manageR's window to
> the main Qgis window.
>   
Hmm, ok, this can be added, but then I don't think you'll be able to 
minimise the manageR dialog in this mode?
> 4 - The introduction of some basic point-and-click features, such as
> the ability to define R's working directory, a file selector for
> loading a pre-saved Rscript, ... stuff like that
>   
Coming very soon!
> 5 - As kind of a more futuristic (and unrealistic?) request, I think
> it would be really cool if manageR could offer some analysis routines
> with a friendlier interface. Maybe some dialogs for executing stuff
> like kernel density plots, regression analysis, interpolation, ... the
> whole shebang. this would make it kind of a gui for spatial analysis
> with R.
>   
This is what I'm currently focused on. I'm trying to come up with a 
system that will automatically generate guis for functions in (some of) 
the main spatial R packages 
(http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Spatial.html). I have guis for 
spdep (mostly), and am working on spgwr and will likely do gstat next...

Other new developments:

Addition of a separate scripting tab. This will allow users to write and 
test R scripts (using autocompletion and syntax highlighting) separately 
from the console. From here users will be able to submit the selected 
text to the console for running in R. You will also be able to save and 
load R scripts.

Cheers,

Carson

-- 
Carson J. Q. Farmer
ISSP Doctoral Fellow
National Centre for Geocomputation (NCG),
Email: Carson.Farmer at gmail.com
Web:   http://www.carsonfarmer.com/
       http://www.ftools.ca/