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Announcing RStudio v1.0

blog.rstudio.org

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Re: Announcing RStudio v1.0

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markdown/Knitr is one of the biggest points. A modern interface would also be nice. And native support for Vim (I know there is a plugin but it's quite limited).

(Spyder maintainer here) What do you mean by a modern interface?

Make it look more native (in the icons and the input fields for instance) and put it all in HiDPI for High DPI displays (panes' icons are still in low resolution for instance).

But mostly, the mardown/knitr part is the big thing missing for data exploration/presentation.

Re: Announcing RStudio v1.0

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Spyder maintainer here) What do you mean by a modern interface?

Make it look more native (in the icons and the input fields for instance) and put it all in HiDPI for High DPI displays (panes' icons are still in low resolution for instance). But mostly, the mardown/knitr part is the big thing missing for data exploration/presentation.

Thanks for your answer. We changed our icon set in Spyder 3.0 to use FontAwesome, which renders well in High DPI screens.

How Spyder looks in each platform depends on Qt, but we have some additional customizations to make it look better at least on macOS.

We'll try to add something like knitr as a third-party plugin in the future. We didn't know it's so important to have it.

Re: Announcing RStudio v1.0

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely the IDE license does not affect the license of code written in the IDE? Agreed. However, the R programming language and many of its libraries are GPL licensed. Can someone elaborate how R can be legally used in to develop proprietary or commercial software? RStudio's website [1] lists all of this large companies that apparently use R. [1]: https://www.rstudio.com/

It's no problem to use GPL software to develop commercial software. If it were the vast majority of software would be open source as some of the most popular compiler toolchains are primarily or wholly open source. What you cannot do, however, is modify GPL software, as you're then creating a derivative work which must legally also bear the GPL license.

Yes, that is correct. My question was about using the R programming language and its libraries rather than RStudio.

If you create a program that uses any of the GPL licensed R libraries, that program must also be GPL licensed [1].

Additionally, the GPL license prohibits using GPL licensed software in proprietary systems [2].

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfLibraryIsGPL

[2]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySy...

Re: Announcing RStudio v1.0

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it look more native (in the icons and the input fields for instance) and put it all in HiDPI for High DPI displays (panes' icons are still in low resolution for instance). But mostly, the mardown/knitr part is the big thing missing for data exploration/presentation.

Thanks for your answer. We changed our icon set in Spyder 3.0 to use FontAwesome, which renders well in High DPI screens. How Spyder looks in each platform depends on Qt, but we have some additional customizations to make it look better at least on macOS. We'll try to add something like knitr as a third-party plugin in the future. We didn't know it's so important to have it.

How that's great. I saw something in the roadmap of Spyder some months ago about markdown, so supporting knitr would be perfect. But from what I know knitr already is supposed to work with python, it's just a question of adding the special keywords knitr uses when you have markdown in Spyder.

Also, since you mention you didn't had idea about knitr importance: It's normally one of the strong points presented when discussing Python vs R for data science.

Knitr makes it much easier to present (and now the RStudio notebooks make it also much easier to explore data) your work and to adopt a literate programming approach since you don't have to keep a Jupyter Notebook and then hack a Markdown/Latex document on the side where you are inserting just some plots and just some code and just some output from your Jypyter notebook that's actually relevant for the presentation or publication you are doing (and then having to remember to change parts of it whenever you change something in the code and the output changes).

Re: Announcing RStudio v1.0

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your answer. We changed our icon set in Spyder 3.0 to use FontAwesome, which renders well in High DPI screens. How Spyder looks in each platform depends on Qt, but we have some additional customizations to make it look better at least on macOS. We'll try to add something like knitr as a third-party plugin in the future. We didn't know it's so important to have it.

How that's great. I saw something in the roadmap of Spyder some months ago about markdown, so supporting knitr would be perfect. But from what I know knitr already is supposed to work with python, it's just a question of adding the special keywords knitr uses when you have markdown in Spyder. Also, since you mention you didn't had idea about knitr importance: It's normally one of the strong points presented when disc…

Very interesting, thanks a lot for your input!

But you're probably aware that you can also generate PDFs from Jupyter notebooks. So I guess the advantage of knitr over notebooks is the ability to easily version control markdown docs.

Are there other advantages you'd like to share?

Re: Announcing RStudio v1.0

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How that's great. I saw something in the roadmap of Spyder some months ago about markdown, so supporting knitr would be perfect. But from what I know knitr already is supposed to work with python, it's just a question of adding the special keywords knitr uses when you have markdown in Spyder. Also, since you mention you didn't had idea about knitr importance: It's normally one of the strong points presented when disc…

Very interesting, thanks a lot for your input! But you're probably aware that you can also generate PDFs from Jupyter notebooks. So I guess the advantage of knitr over notebooks is the ability to easily version control markdown docs. Are there other advantages you'd like to share?

I think the great advantage is not really that. (With a bit of trouble you could already output HTML/PDF from an iPython notebook and remove the output in order to make version control easier (although that's fully automatised with markdown/knitr in RStudio)).

But the big selling point is that you can choose which parts of your notebook to include in the HTML/PDF output. Input, output, plots, you can write a document for a scientific paper, presentation or even a book and not have to show all the code, or all the output or all the plots like you must do with iPython. That's the really strong point with knitr.

Re: Announcing RStudio v1.0

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting, thanks a lot for your input! But you're probably aware that you can also generate PDFs from Jupyter notebooks. So I guess the advantage of knitr over notebooks is the ability to easily version control markdown docs. Are there other advantages you'd like to share?

I think the great advantage is not really that. (With a bit of trouble you could already output HTML/PDF from an iPython notebook and remove the output in order to make version control easier (although that's fully automatised with markdown/knitr in RStudio)). But the big selling point is that you can choose which parts of your notebook to include in the HTML/PDF output. Input, output, plots, you can write a document…

Ok, I understand things better now. Thanks a lot for taking the time to go through this :)

There have been long discussions about hiding output or code from Jupyter notebooks throughout the years but (unfortunately) they haven't derived on a final decision from the Jupyter team.

In any case, your feedback is a very strong motivation to start working on this in Spyder. Thanks a lot for it!

We have several things planned already for the next six months, but we'll try to have an initial implementation of a knitr equivalent before the summer of next year :)

Re: Announcing RStudio v1.0

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the great advantage is not really that. (With a bit of trouble you could already output HTML/PDF from an iPython notebook and remove the output in order to make version control easier (although that's fully automatised with markdown/knitr in RStudio)). But the big selling point is that you can choose which parts of your notebook to include in the HTML/PDF output. Input, output, plots, you can write a document…

Ok, I understand things better now. Thanks a lot for taking the time to go through this :) There have been long discussions about hiding output or code from Jupyter notebooks throughout the years but (unfortunately) they haven't derived on a final decision from the Jupyter team. In any case, your feedback is a very strong motivation to start working on this in Spyder. Thanks a lot for it! We have several things plann…

These are really great news. Thank you.

I would still suggest that you would look into knitr before, since it already supports other languages besides R (although I can't understand if so extensively as R) so perhaps it would be easier to just build from that.

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