Commander {Rcmdr} | R Documentation |
Start the R Commander GUI (graphical user interface)
Commander()
Getting Started
Commands to read, write, transform, and analyze data are entered using the menus in the menu bar at the top of the Commander window. Most menu items lead to dialog boxes requesting further specification. I suggest that you explore the menus to see what is available.
Below the menu bar is an information field displaying the name of the active data set; buttons for editing and displaying the active data set in the R data editor; and check boxes for logging commands and attaching the active data set to the R search path. The information field for the active data set is actually a button that can be used to select the active data set from data frames in memory.
By default, commands are logged to the log/script window (the large, initially empty window immediately below), and the active data set is attached to the search path. Below the log window is an information field showing the active statistical model, and a Submit button for re-executing commands in the log window. The information field for the active model is a button that can be used to select the active model from among linear and generalized linear model objects in memory.
Almost all commands require an active data set. When the Commander starts, there is no active data set, as indicated in the data set information field. A data set becomes the active data set when it is read into memory from an R package or imported from a text file, SPSS data set, or Minitab data set. In addition, the active data set may be selected from among R data frames resident in memory. You may therefore switch among data sets during a session.
Some Rcmdr
dialogs (those in the Statistics -> Fit models menu)
produce linear or generalized
linear models. When a model is fit, it becomes the active model, as indicated in the information
field at the lower-left of the Commander window.
Items in the Models menu apply to the active model. Initially, there is no active model.
If there are several models in memory, you may select the active model from among them.
If command logging in turned on, R commands that are generated from the menus and dialog boxes are entered into the log/script window in the Commander. You can edit these commands in the normal manner and can also type new commands into the log/script window. The contents of the log window can be saved during or at the end of the session, and a saved log can be loaded into the log window.
To re-execute a command or set of commands, select the lines to be executed using the mouse and press the Submit button at the lower-right of the Commander window (or Control-R, for "run"). If no text is selected, the Submit button (or Control-R) submits the line containing the text-insertion cursor.
Pressing Control-F brings up a find-text dialog box (which may also be accessed via Edit -> Find) to search for text in the log/script window.
Right-clicking the mouse (clicking button 3 in a three-button mouse) in the log/script window brings up a "context" menu with the Edit-menu items, plus a Submit item.
When you
execute commands from the Commander window, you must ensure that the sequence of commands
is logical. For example, it makes no sense to fit a statistical model to a data set that has
not been read into memory. Commands generated by the Commander or executed from the log window
appear in the R session window with an "R-cmdr>
" prefix.
Exit from the Commander via the File -> Exit menu or by closing the Commander window.
Customization and Configuration
Configuration files reside in the etc
subdirectory of the package.
The Rcmdr
menus may be customized by editing the file Rcmdr-menus.txt
.
Some functions (e.g., hist
) that do not normally create visible printed output when executed
from the command prompt will do so — unless prevented — when executed from the
Commander log window. Such output
can be suppressed by listing the names of these functions in the log-exceptions.txt
file.
You can add R code to the package, e.g., for creating additional dialogs, by placing files with
file type .R
in the etc
directory, also editing Rcmdr-menus.txt
to provide
additional menus, sub-menus, or menu-items. A demo addition is provided in the file
compareModels.demo
. To activate the demo, rename this file to compareModels.R
,
and uncomment the corresponding menu line in Rcmdr-menus.txt
. Alternatively, you can edit
the source package and recompile it.
The following functions are provided to assist in writing dialogs: activeDataSet
,
activeModel
, doItAndPrint
, justDoIt
, listDataSets
,
listGeneralizedLinearModels
, listLinearModels
, logger
. The following global
variables contain information about variables in the active data set: .factors
,
.numeric
, .twoLevelFactors
, .variables
. See help(Rcmdr.Utilities)
for more information.
In addition, several features are controlled by run-time options, set via the options("Rcmdr")
command. These options should be set before the package is loaded. If the options are unset, which is
the usual situation, defaults are used. Specify options as a list of name=value pairs. You can
set none, one, several, or all options. The available options are as follows:
log.font.size
log.width
log.height
placement
"-40+40"
, which puts the window near the upper-right corner of the screen.contrasts
contrasts
option; the default is
c("contr.Treatment", "contr.poly")
. When the Commander exits, the contrasts
option is returned to its pre-existing value. Note that contr.Treatment
is from the car
package.grab.focus
TRUE
(the default) for the current Tk window to
"grab" the focus — that is, to prevent the focus from being changed to another Tk window.
On some systems, grabbing the focus in this manner apparently causes the OK, Cancel, and
Help buttons to be disabled after the user types in a text field. If you experience this
problem, set the grab.focus
option to FALSE
.double.click
TRUE
if you want a double-click of the left mouse
button to press the default button in all dialogs. The default is FALSE
.sort.names
TRUE
(the default) if you want variable names to be sorted
alphabetically in variable lists.show.edit.button
TRUE
(the default) if you want an Edit button in the Commander
window, permitting you to edit the active data set. Windows users may wish to set this option to FALSE
to suppress the Edit button because changing variable names in the data editor can cause R to crash.scale.factor
NULL
.default.font.size
"*helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-xx*"
, where xx
is the default font size. This option is only for non-Windows systems.default.font
tkwait
tkwait
option to
TRUE
; otherwise set the option to FALSE
or ignore it.
An undesirable side effect of setting
the tkwait
option to TRUE
is that the R session command prompt is suppressed until the Commander exits.
One can still enter commands via the log/script window, however. In particular, there is no reason to use this option
under Windows, and it should not be used with the Windows R GUI with buffered output.Most options may also be set via the emph{File -> Options} menu, which will restart the Commander after options are set.
John Fox jfox@mcmaster.ca
options(Rcmdr=list(log.font.size=12, contrasts=c("contr.Sum", "contr.poly")))