This package demonstrate how to reimplement the {svDialogs} functions using different widgets and GUI. Only a couple of dialog boxes are currently implementation, just for the sake of that demonstration.
You should execute the code in this vignette in an R interactive session that supports Tcl/Tk display in order to get the various dialog boxes!
# This must be TRUE in order to see the Tcl/Tk dialog boxes
capabilities("tcltk")
## tcltk
## TRUE
When {svDialogs} is loaded, it creates a default .GUI
object using nativeGUI
(native dialog boxes) in priority,
followed by textual versions at the command line as fallback alternative
(textCLI
).
library(svGUI)
library(svDialogs)
# The default GUI
.GUI
## The default SciViews GUI (.GUI)
## using widgets from: nativeGUI, textCLI
<- gui_widgets(.GUI)
def_widgets def_widgets
## [1] "nativeGUI" "textCLI"
This means that {svDialogs} will use a native box (or a text version, depending from where you run the code in R) for this code:
dlg_message("Hello world!")$res
To use the Tcl/Tk dialog boxes implemented in {svDialogstcltk} in the default GUI without changing anything in the subsequent code that uses the dialog boxes, you just have to load this package before use:
library(svDialogstcltk)
## Loading required package: tcltk
gui_widgets(.GUI)
## [1] "tcltkGUI" "nativeGUI" "textCLI"
A new item, tcltkGUI
, is inserted at the first position
of the gui_widgets()
specification in the .GUI
object. The consequence is the use of the corresponding methods, if they
are defined for the dlg_xxx()
functions. For instance, you
should now get a Tcl/Tk version of a message box with the following
code:
dlg_message("Hello world!")$res
The {svDialogs} logic allows to implement simultaneously various GUIs, with different features. For instance, you may be interested to implement a Tcl/Tk-only GUI side-by-side with native dialog boxes that are used for the rest of the R process. In this case, you must manually insert the GUI you want to use in the GUI object.
# Restore nativeGUI + textual fallback for the default .GUI
gui_change('.GUI', widgets = def_widgets, reset = TRUE)
## The default SciViews GUI (.GUI)
## using widgets from: nativeGUI, textCLI
# Add a new GUI called myGUI
gui_add("myGUI")
## Graphical User Interface: myGUI
## using widgets from: nativeGUI, textCLI
myGUI
## Graphical User Interface: myGUI
## using widgets from: nativeGUI, textCLI
# Switch to Tcl/Tk version of the dialog boxes exclusively for myGUI
gui_change('myGUI', widgets = "tcltkGUI", reset = TRUE)
## Graphical User Interface: myGUI
## using widgets from: tcltkGUI
Now, with this configuration, all code that use the default GUI will
display native dialog boxes. However, code using myGUI
will
always display the Tcl/Tk version of the dialog boxes.
# A message box in the default GUI (native)
dlg_message("Hello from the default GUI!")$res
## [1] "ok"
# A message box in myGUI (Tcl/Tk version)
dlg_message("Hello from myGUI (Tcl/Tk)!", gui = myGUI)$res
## [1] "ok"