Software
RGG: A general GUI Framework for R scripts
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* Corresponding author: Albert Kriegner albert.kriegner@arcs.ac.at
1 Austrian Research Centers GmbH – ARC, Molecular Diagnostics, A-2444 Seibersdorf, Austria
2 Institut für Statistik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 München, Germany
BMC Bioinformatics 2009, 10:74 doi:10.1186/1471-2105-10-74
Published: 2 March 2009Abstract
Background
R is the leading open source statistics software with a vast number of biostatistical and bioinformatical analysis packages. To exploit the advantages of R, extensive scripting/programming skills are required.
Results
We have developed a software tool called R GUI Generator (RGG) which enables the easy generation of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) for the programming language R by adding a few Extensible Markup Language (XML) – tags. RGG consists of an XML-based GUI definition language and a Java-based GUI engine. GUIs are generated in runtime from defined GUI tags that are embedded into the R script. User-GUI input is returned to the R code and replaces the XML-tags. RGG files can be developed using any text editor. The current version of RGG is available as a stand-alone software (RGGRunner) and as a plug-in for JGR.
Conclusion
RGG is a general GUI framework for R that has the potential to introduce R statistics (R packages, built-in functions and scripts) to users with limited programming skills and helps to bridge the gap between R developers and GUI-dependent users. RGG aims to abstract the GUI development from individual GUI toolkits by using an XML-based GUI definition language. Thus RGG can be easily integrated in any software. The RGG project further includes the development of a web-based repository for RGG-GUIs. RGG is an open source project licensed under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and can be downloaded freely at http://rgg.r-forge.r-project.org webcite