TODO list for Windows version of R

This site is intended as an intermediate repository for more or less finalized ideas and plans for the R statistical system. Most parts of the site are open to the public, and we welcome discussions on the ideas, but please do not take them for more than that, in particular there is no commitment to actually carry out the plans in finite time unless expressedly stated.

Previews

Cross-compiled previews of upcoming versions are available, of varying timeliness but usually no more than a few days' old. See the README for details.

September 2001 These previews are likely to be built rarely whilst I am on leave.

In the run up to a release Duncan Murdoch makes builds available at http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base.

Enhancements

There are currently no plans to make further Windows-specific enhancements to R. R-core members feel that the aim of providing equivalent functionality on Windows as on Unix/Linux has been achieved as well as is practicable with the limited expertise and resources available.

There are many opportunities for contributions by Windows programmers, including the lists below.

Bugs

A few things we know about, but do not know how to solve.

fifo() could be implemented via named pipes.
There are a number of aspects of the toolkit (GraphApp) that are not wholly satisfactory to experienced Windows users. There is a new version of GraphApp available (but many changes were made to the old one).

User suggestions

Suggestions include:

Connections to external databases, ability to read/write Excel and dBase files, .... [package RODBC can do a lot of this. There is code to read/write Excel files in Gnumeric.]
Use separate threads for the R engine, graphics and overall control (and thereby avoid polling for Windows events).
The ability to write WMF on Unix. (This means vector WMF, not the bitmaps that epstool and GSView make. One possible approach (suggested by Ben Bolker) would be to use libEMF.)