No need to talk to strangersCooperation of Interactive Software with R as Moderator

摘要

Interactive software is very helpful for exploratory analysis of data, butrnmost packages are optimized only for a specific field of work. Interactionrnbetween the various projects is limited. On the other hand very flexiblernstatistical software, such as R, S or S-plus exist covering the needs of almostrnall fields, but without support for interactive graphics. This paperrndescribes our experience with different approaches linking R with interactivernsoftware using flat files and the Omegahat interface. Such linkingrndirectly extends capabilities of the interactive software without the needrnfor special communication layers such as CORBA.We also show how suchrnan interface can be used to implement cooperation between different interactivernsoftware packages with R as moderator. Practical examples arerngiven based on our current projects Klimt and Mondrian.