An Introduction to GUI Development

using R

Overview
Introduction
R Interfaces
GUIs for programming

Programming for GUIs

GUIs for teaching how to program
GUI task-oriented applications
gWidgets package

Integrating R into other applications

GUI deployment

Introduction
R Interfaces/Console alternatives
RStudio
Programmed in C++ and GTK+

JGR
Java

Revolution R Productivity Environment

(RPE)
MS Visual Studio

Red-R (Open Source visual

programming for R
SciViews (extends Komodo edit)

GUIs for Programming (code

editors)

R internal editor (on Mac!)

Emacs + ESS
Eclipse + StatET
Gvim/Vim-R
Notepad++ / NppToR
WinEdt/RWniEdt ($30!!!)
Tinn-R (MS Windows only)
jEdit (doesn't pass code to R)

GUIs to learn programming

R Commander (Rcmdr package)
Satistical analysis functions

RKWard (Linux only)

Poll from KDnuggets.com (data miners!)

GUI Programming using R

gWidgets package
written by J. Verzani
gWidgets provides a toolkit-independent API for building interactive
GUIs.
At least one of gWidgetstcltk, gWidgetsRGtk2, gWidgetsQt (on RForge only) and qWidgetsrJava needs to be installed.
i.e. GUI toolkits must be installed (except Tcltk, pre-installed, default)

the user can switch between GUI toolkits with relative

ease and can write code in a toolkit independent way
Well, not quite

GTK+ toolkit
www.gtk.org

gWidgets
functions

GUI contruction using gWidgets

Use containers (in ggroup, gwindow, gnotebook functions) to nest widgets

Handlers i.e. event handling, define the executed operation
Handlers can be added after the GUI is created e.g. addHandlerClicked()
Drag-and-drop is also featured in gWidgets

Demo....

library(gWidgets)
options("guiToolkit"="RGtk2")
win<gwindow("HelloWorld,adnauseum",visible=TRUE)
group<ggroup(horizontal=FALSE,container=win)
obj<gbutton("Hello...",container=group,handler=function(h,...)
gmessage("world"))
obj<glabel("Hello...",container=group,handler=function(h,...)
gmessage("world"))
obj<gcombobox(c("Hello","world"),container=group)
obj<gedit("Helloworld",container=group)
obj<gtext("Helloworld",container=group,font.attr=list(style="bold"))

Sample Problem
Survey conducted to see changes in HIV and
non-HIV services in sub-Saharan Africa
Conducted across health centres & hospitals, also
individual health-worker data, in several sub-saharan
Africa countries

Relatively small questionnaire resulting in 800

variables!
Variables names themselves are not very useful
e.g. Q001. Great scope for programming error

Variable labels (the actual questions) contain the

information on what is collected
With the concept of variable names dropped, an
interactive GUI might work better with variable labels
than programming!

Solution
Create new sets of labels
which work as indexes
These can be used to filter, manage and
analyze data
- Restructuring of data not required

Begin with a search & replace dialogue

screen
How would you design it (so that it would be a
better option than just using grep or regexpr)?

Demo...

Deducer
An intuitive, cross-platform graphical data
analysis system
Deducer is based upon rJava and provides
access to the Java Swing Network
Related Packages

Description

DeducerExtras

Additional dialogs and functions for Deducer

DeducerPlugIn Example Deducer Plug-in Example

DeducerPlugInScaling

Reliability and factor analysis plugin

DeducerSpatial

Deducer for spatial data analysis

DeducerSurvival

Add Survival Dialogue to Deducer

DeducerText

Deducer GUI for Text Data

gWidgets versus Deducer

Deducer has a slightly lower level library, but
more flexible and compatible with JGR
Deducer requires you to explicitly specify
positions of widgets, and is a little more
verbose when you come to add event
handling logic
Visit www.r-bloggers.com for a discussion

Other R GUI packages and tools

(which I know little about!)

PBS (Pacific Biological Station) packages

Rattle (data mining GUI)
Brodgar (used for class-room teaching etc.)
pmg (poor mans GUI, similar to Rcmdr)

Current List of Packages with

tools for GUI development or
utilize a programmed GUI*

*as of January 2013

Package

description

ade4TkGUI

GUI for ade4 package

AtelieR

Basic statistical inference & bayesian analysis

BiodiversityR

Biodiversity, suitability, community ecology analysis

biOpsGUI

Basic image operations

BiplotGUI

Interactive Biplots in R

CADStat

Statistical methods useful for causal assessment

caGUI

A Tcl/Tk GUI for the functions in the ca package

cncaGUI

Canonical Non-symmetrical Correspondence Analysis

DALY

Stochastic DALY calculations

detrendeR

Start the detrendeR Graphical User Interface (GUI)

digeR

GUI tool for analyzing 2D DIGE data

GGEBiplotGUI

GGEBiplotGUI: Interactive GGE Biplots in R

GrapheR

Multi-platform GUI for drawing customizable graphs

MDSGUI

A GUI for interactive MDS in R

MergeGUI

A GUI for Merging Datasets in R

Metabonomic

GUI for Metabonomic Analysis

Package

description

migui

Graphical User Interface of the mi Package

MissingDataGUI

A GUI for Missing Data Exploration

MSeasyTkGUI

A GUI for Missing Data Exploration

multibiplotGUI

Multibiplot Analysis in R

mutossGUI

A graphical user interface for the MuToss Project

PBSadmb

ADMB for R Using Scripts or GUI

PMSddesolve

Solver for Delay Differential Equations

PBSmapping

Mapping Fisheries Data and Spatial Analysis Tools

PBSmodelling

Interact with Models, Explore Data, Dynamic

Presentations

playwith

A GUI for interactive plots using GTK+

pmg

Poor Man's GUI

ProgGUIinR

book "Programming Graphical User Interfaces in R"

QCAGUI

QCA Graphical User Interface

R2STATS

Fit and compare GLM and GLMM in R

RandForestGUI

Random Forests

RenextGUI

GUI for Renext

Package

description

ResearchMethods

GUIs to help teach statistics to non-statistics students

reshapeGUI

A GUI for the reshape2 and plyr packages

RPMG

Interactive R analysis sessions

RunuranGUI

A GUI for the UNU.RAN random variate generators

Rz

GUI Tool for Data Management like SPSS or Stata

sculpt3d

A simple toolbar GUI for brushing RGL plots

sdcMicroGUI

Graphical user interface for package sdcMicro

SeqGrapheR

Graph based visualization of cluster of DNA seq reads

Sim.DiffProcGUI

Simulation of Diffusion Processes

speedR

A GUI based importing and filtering tool

TGUICore

Teaching GUI - Core functionality

TGUITeaching

Teaching GUI - prototype

tourrGUI

A Tour GUI using gWidgets

traitr

creating GUIs (traits UI module for python)

WMCapacity

Bayesian working memory models

x12GUI

X12 - Graphical User Interface

Package

description

Common JavaJars Useful libraries for building a Java based GUI

fgui

Function GUI

miniGUI

tktcl quick and simple function GUI

Considerations in GUI
development
&
deployment
Which Widget library?
GTK+, Java, Qt?

Program the UI or use a UI designer?

e.g. QtDesigner

Choice of software for GUI deployment?

R (gWidgets package etc.)
Python (wxPython, PyQt, PyQt4 libraries)
R/Python integration (call R using Rpy, Rpy2)

Sage (www.sagemath.org)?
Sage uses existing open-source libraries wherever they exist!
See sagemath.org, writen in Python & Cython, not supported by
MS Windows

Web-applications
rApache project (www.rapache.net)
Embed R in the Apache web server

Rook package
Provides an interface to build webapplications with rApache

gWidgetsWWW
Its independent of gWidgets!
Use JavaScript libraries, rapache

Shiny in Rstudio!!!

Documentation
Lots of material on the web
Journal of Statistical
Software (Vol. 49)
Special issue of R on GUIs

Lawrence and Verzani book

(2012)
gWidgets package vignette

Final comments
Dont write a GUI which you hope others will find
useful. Write one you use yourself and hopefully it may
be of use other people
A successful GUI will requires the right balance of detail
and simplicity
Writing a GUI using R may not be the optimal
deployment of a GUI, but it is nevertheless easy to do!
It is my opinion that programing from within R is a very good
way to get a working GUI quickly, but you are better served
leaving R for something polished and professional looking.
R-Blogger

Thank you!