RKWard 0.7.4

Monday, 30 May 2022

A new release, RKWard 0.7.4, is available for download, today. This release cycle was particularly focused on streamlining the first steps with RKWard (but long time users will appreciate these changes as well): The "Welcome to RKWard" page has been reworked, entirely, and now serves as a "dashboard" with some of the most important tasks, including, among others, several new options for importing data from other programs. Several excess dialogs that would greet new users have been removed.

Beyond this, almost all plugins now support a preview, helping to see results faster, and to send only intended output to the output window.

As usual, we're looking forward to your feedback suggestions, and contributions!

The changes in detail:

  • New features and improvements
    • Support "step into" and "finish current" modes in the R debugger window
    • When directly upgrading from very old versions (pre 0.6.3, currently), discard existing config settings
    • Plugin maps with the same id are grouped together, and the most recent version is used, automatically
    • Added functionality to install add-on packages directly from git (formerly available as external plugin rk.gitInstall)
    • Add option to show ANOVA table for linear regression
    • Add default preview() function is available to plugins, reducing the code needed to add preview functionality
    • Add preview functionality to most existing plugins that did not have it, yet
    • Better placement of messages in non-plot preview windows
    • Package installation uses inline widget to provide progress feedback, instead of separate dialogs
    • Package installation no longer uses an external process, unless required for root permissions
    • (Re-)added improved "Import Assistant" to help getting started with importing data
    • "Paste special" can now also paste data.frames with labels, and is available in the Workspace Browser context menu
    • Add "rio"-based generic import plugin
    • Allow separate analysis by grouping factors in Analysis->Descriptive Statistics
    • Rework help start page to serve as a dashboard for common tasks, replacing the old startup dialog
  • Bug fixes
    • Fixed: Disabling a element in plugins would not make the sub-elements non-required
    • Fixed some problems with cancelling running commands
    • Fixed: Package installation as root would fail to find kdesu/kdesudo on recent systems
    • Fixed: R help pages would refuse to open in new tab
    • Fixed: Windows: Issues with some shiny apps due to a too small stack size
    • Fixed: Installation from dialog would fail for R packages requiring the rkward package
    • Fix quirks around "Save as" for rkward output documents