RKWard 0.6.1 - Support for R 3.0.0, new features for plugin developers

Tuesday, 2 April 2013

A new version of RKWard is available download. The most important bit for most users will be that RKWard 0.6.1 works with the upcoming R 3.0.0, while the previous version will not work with this version of R. Users installing RKWard from source should note that you will have to compile RKWard after upgrading to R 3.0.0 or later. If in doubt, feel free to ask for help.

Besides compatibility, the new release brings new features and fixes. A particular development focus has been the addition of new options for plugin developers. For a more detailed description of the new features,see these mails, or refer to the usual documentation on writing plugins for RKWard.

The changes in detail:

  • New features and improvements
    • Add plugin for subsetting data.frames by rows or columns
    • On the Windows platform, add an new (experimental) binary startup wrapper (rkward.exe)
    • 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 <dependency_check> 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 plugins while idle
    • In the data.frame editor, columns containing invalid values are now highlighted in red
    • 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()
    • rk.set.output.html.file() gains argument to allow addition of custom content to the html header
  • Fixes
    • Add option to force-close a graphics window
    • 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
    • Fix conversion from Numeric to Factor in the data editor
    • Fixed: If none of the previous plugin maps could be found on startup, re-add the default
    • 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"