Rstudio

R Studio is a free and open source integrated development environment (IDE) for R, available both a desktop and server version. RStudio Qtframework for its graphical user interface. QT initially a Trollsoft/Nokia project, is a cross-platform application framework widely used for developing application software (e.g. the KDE desktop on Linux machines) . Qt is currently being developed by the Qt Company under open-source governance, involving among other partners Intel.

R Studio, founded by several well know R developers and scientists, is a company developing many R related projects. "Inspired by the innovations of R users in science, education, and industry, RStudio develops free and open tools for the R community and enterprise-ready professional products to make it easier for teams to scale and share work".

Rstudio has several windows as shown in the screenshot. The menus have all the options found in the standard R GUI, with many more useful for those who wish to write and debug their own R functions and packages. But also for non-programmers the tight integration of functions (console window) with a viewer for output, charts and help information is very convenient. In addition newer packages that produce charts for viewing in a web browser user show the charts in the viewer window (in the standard GUI the corresponding function fire up a browser to view the charts). [An example of this is plotly; see below]

RStudio's manipulate package

The manipulate package lets you interactively control various's options in any R function using sliders and other controls. In the above screenshot the manipulate package has created the chart shown in the "plot" window. If you cliche the icon the control panel shown here will be displayed.

This has been produced using the command shown below; it uses the simple plot function, but some of the options can be controlled interactively (the corresponding options are highlighted in the code snippet.

manipulate(plot(world$urb, world$lifeem, 
                xlim = c(x.min, x.max), type = type, axes = axes, ann = label), 
           x.min = slider(0, 100, initial = 0),   x.max = slider(0, 100, initial = 100),
           type = picker("points" = "p", "line" = "l", "none" = "n", initial = "points"),
           axes = checkbox(TRUE, "Draw Axes"),
           label = checkbox(TRUE, "Draw Axes Labels"))

Integration with plotly

The R package plotly that lets you use through R displays a plotly interactive chart in the Rstudio viewer. Note the presence of tools for zooming and other display options. When the mouse hovers over a specific data point, its values will be automatically displayed.

The example has been produced with this code:

plot_ly(world, x = urb, y = log(gnpcap),  type="scatter", mode = "markers", color = infmor)
Rstudio: Selection of other important projects