[BlindRUG] add-on packages

[Godfrey, Jonathan]

Hello all,

A question from Veronica about the accessibility of libraries came up recently.

R has picked up a number of unfortunate terms that are in the opinion of some, rather misused.
The command library() loads an add-on package. Packages are stored in libraries. The folder where they are stored with the base distribution is called "library" too.

So Veronica's question was actually about add-on packages and I now know she had discovered that one package was not accessible. It is the R commander package which is called Rcmdr for short. I've known for some time that this package and others like it are not accessible.

In the case of Rcmdr, the GUI that the developers have built for R is done using a TCL/TK package that is part of the base distribution. It seems to me that any GUI built using that set of tools will be as inaccessible as Rcmdr. It looks like no one will put much energy into making the outcomes of the TCL/TK package more accessible so the developers who use it are stuck in an inaccessible environment.

I have not created a list of the packages that rely on TCL/TK but I'm pretty sure it is now possible to do so. Given there are 6000 add-on packages on CRAN and many others not on CRAN, I don't see the point of creating the list and having to update it frequently. I think a better approach would be to find someone who could write an add-on package that has all the functionality of the TCL/TK package but uses an accessible set of tools instead. (That isn't me by the way) Perhaps an interface to the wxWidgets might be a starting point; others will have greater knowledge than me and in the end I don't care how things work while they are working so much. When they don't work I want to know why.

In most cases, a package that builds a GUI using TCL/TK has underlying commands being generated in a retrievable manner. Those commands are probably more use to us than the GUI will be for some time to come. When I last looked at Rcmdr, it opened the GUI automatically which was unfortunate. The first time I looked at it, the GUI didn't actually come up so the regular R session was still doing its thing and I could use any of the commands provided by the Rcmdr package without the GUI.

I hope this helps,
Jonathan






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