Mac OS X Panther for Unix Geeks, Second Edition

RAqua

The open source statistical computing package R is a GNU project to develop a package similar to Bell Laboratories’ S statistical package. R runs on a variety of platforms, including most X11-based systems and Windows. Although an X11-based version of R can be installed with Fink, another port of R that supports both X11 and Mac OS X, RAqua, has been developed by Stefano M. Iacus and others associated with the R-Core/R-Foundation. A binary distribution of RAqua is distributed through the Comprehensive R Network (CRAN; http://cran.r-project.org/).

The installer places an application named StartR in your Applications folder. Double-clicking the StartR icon opens an Aqua-based console window, which is divided into lower and upper subwindows. You can enter R commands in the lower subwindow, while the upper subwindow shows your command history, as shown in Figure 7-14.

Figure 7-14. RAqua’s console

Figure 7-15 shows an RAqua graphics window containing a histogram.

Figure 7-15. RAqua’s graphics window

RAqua is AppleScriptable. Example 7-1 shows an AppleScript that instructs RAqua to store some values in a variable x, and display a histogram corresponding to these values.

You can use X11 graphics with R from the Aqua R console or from a Terminal (or xterm) window. In either case you must ...