Trying out Google Prediction API from R

Ubuntu Login
Image via Wikipedia

So I saw the news at NY R Meetup and decided to have a go at Prediction API Package (which first started off as a blog post at

http://onertipaday.blogspot.com/2010/11/r-wrapper-for-google-prediction-api.html

1)My OS was Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook

Ubuntu has a slight glitch plus workaround for installing the RCurl package on which the Google Prediction API is dependent- you need to first install this Ubuntu package for RCurl to install libcurl4-gnutls-dev

Once you install that using Synaptic,

Simply start R

2) Install Packages rjson and Rcurl using install.packages and choosing CRAN

Since GooglePredictionAPI is not yet on CRAN

,

3) Download that package from

https://code.google.com/p/google-prediction-api-r-client/downloads/detail?name=googlepredictionapi_0.1.tar.gz&can=2&q=

You need to copy this downloaded package to your “first library ” folder

When you start R, simply run

.libPaths()[1]

and thats the folder you copy the GooglePredictionAPI package  you downloaded.

5) Now the following line works

  1. Under R prompt,
  2. > install.packages("googlepredictionapi_0.1.tar.gz", repos=NULL, type="source")

6) Uploading data to Google Storage using the GUI (rather than gs util)

Just go to https://sandbox.google.com/storage/

and thats the Google Storage manager

Notes on Training Data-

Use a csv file

The first column is the score column (like 1,0 or prediction score)

There are no headers- so delete headers from data file and move the dependent variable to the first column  (Note I used data from the kaggle contest for R package recommendation at

http://kaggle.com/R?viewtype=data )

6) The good stuff:

Once you type in the basic syntax, the first time it will ask for your Google Credentials (email and password)

It then starts showing you time elapsed for training.

Now you can disconnect and go off (actually I got disconnected by accident before coming back in a say 5 minutes so this is the part where I think this is what happened is why it happened, dont blame me, test it for yourself) –

and when you come back (hopefully before token expires)  you can see status of your request (see below)

> library(rjson)
> library(RCurl)
Loading required package: bitops
> library(googlepredictionapi)
> my.model <- PredictionApiTrain(data="gs://numtraindata/training_data")
The request for training has sent, now trying to check if training is completed
Training on numtraindata/training_data: time:2.09 seconds
Training on numtraindata/training_data: time:7.00 seconds

7)

Note I changed the format from the URL where my data is located- simply go to your Google Storage Manager and right click on the file name for link address  ( https://sandbox.google.com/storage/numtraindata/training_data.csv)

to gs://numtraindata/training_data  (that kind of helps in any syntax error)

8) From the kind of high level instructions at  https://code.google.com/p/google-prediction-api-r-client/, you could also try this on a local file

Usage

## Load googlepredictionapi and dependent libraries
library(rjson)
library(RCurl)
library(googlepredictionapi)

## Make a training call to the Prediction API against data in the Google Storage.
## Replace MYBUCKET and MYDATA with your data.
my.model <- PredictionApiTrain(data="gs://MYBUCKET/MYDATA")

## Alternatively, make a training call against training data stored locally as a CSV file.
## Replace MYPATH and MYFILE with your data.
my.model <- PredictionApiTrain(data="MYPATH/MYFILE.csv")

At the time of writing my data was still getting trained, so I will keep you posted on what happens.

Libre Office (Beta) 3 Launched

Larry Ellison crop
Image via Wikipedia

The guys who forked off Larry Ellison‘s Open Office launched Beta 3 .

Whats new-

  • DDE reconnect – the old DDE implementation was very quirky in that, opening and closing a DDE server document a few times would totally disconnect the link with the client document. Plus it also causes several other side-effects because of the way it accessed the server documents. The new implementation removes those quirkiness plus enables re-connection of DDE server client pair when the server document is loaded into LO when the client document is already open.
  • External reference rework – External reference handling has been re-worked to make it work within OFFSET function. In addition, this change allows Calc to read data directly from documents already loaded when possible. The old implementation would always load from disk even when the document was already loaded.
  • Autocorrect accidental caps locks – automatically corrects what appears to be a mis-cap such as tHIS or tHAT, as a result of the user not realizing the CAPS lock key was on. When correcting the mis-cap, it also automatically turns off CAPS lock (note: not working on Mac OS X yet). (translation)(look for accidental-caps-lock in the commit log)
  • Swapped default key bindings of Delete and Backspace keys in Calc – this was a major annoyance for former Excel users when migrating to Calc.

(look for delete-backspace-key in the commit log)

  • In Calc, hitting TAB during auto-complete commits current selection and moves to the next cell. Shift-TAB cycles through auto-complete selections.
  • and lots of bugs squashed….

_Announcement_

 

 

The Document Foundation is happy to announce the third beta of
LibreOffice 3.3. This beta comes with lots of improvements and
bugfixes. As usual, be warned that this is beta quality software –
nevertheless, we ask you to play with it – we very much welcome your
feedback and testing!

Please, download suitable package(s) from

http://www.documentfoundation.org/download/

install them, and start testing. Should you find bugs, please report
them to the FreeDesktop Bugzilla:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org

A detailed list of changes from the past four weeks of development is
to be found here:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Weekly_Summary

If you want to get involved with this exciting project, you can
contribute code:

http://www.documentfoundation.org/develop/

translate LibreOffice to your language:

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/LibreOffice/i18n/translating_3.3

or just donate:

http://www.documentfoundation.org/contribution/

A list of known issues with Beta 3 is available from our wiki:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Beta3

Opera's Minimalistic Peer to peer OS Browser

mijn Opera Unite Fridge
Image by Jaap Stronks via Flickr

Yes Opera is a browser but you may as well call it an OS. With an uncluttered design, some mind bending Opera Unite Peer to Peer features (in a browser!) withhttp://unite.opera.com/applications/, and nifty widgets- try singing some Opera. I really dont know how browsers make money, especially since they are suing each other all the time, but well- heres to more choice – if you don’t want a corporation owned browser lusting to sell your leaked privacy data to Don Draper- Opera is a good choice- much better than Sea Monkey and the Fox .

I really liked the option to make my own web server in 2 clicks,and share stuff. The bit trorrent support is really nice but I wonder if there was any Scandinavian brotherly ports in bit torrent sharing 😉 , me hearties

Here comes PySpread- 85,899,345 rows and 14,316,555 columns

A Bold GNU Head
Image via Wikipedia

Whats new/ One more open source analytics package. Built like a spreadsheet with an ability to import a million cells-

From http://pyspread.sourceforge.net/index.html

about Pyspread is a cross-platform Python spreadsheet application. It is based on and written in the programming language Python.

Instead of spreadsheet formulas, Python expressions are entered into the spreadsheet cells. Each expression returns a Python object that can be accessed from other cells. These objects can represent anything including lists or matrices.

Pyspread screenshot
features In pyspread, cells expect Python expressions and return Python objects. Therefore, complex data types such as lists, trees or matrices can be handled within a single cell. Macros can be used for functions that are too complex for a single expression.

Since Python modules can be easily used without external scripts, arbitrary size rational numbers (via gmpy), fixed point decimal numbers for business calculations, (via the decimal module from the standard library) and advanced statistics including plotting functions (via RPy) can be used in the spreadsheet. Everything is directly available from each cell. Just use the grid

Data can be imported and exported using csv files or the clipboard. Other forms of data exchange is possible using external Python modules.

In  order to simplify sparse matrix editing, pyspread features a three dimensional grid that can be sized up to 85,899,345 rows and 14,316,555 columns (64 bit-systems, depends on row height and column width). Note that importing a million cells requires about 500 MB of memory.

The concept of pyspread allows doing everything from each cell that a Python script can do. This may very well include deleting your hard drive or sending your data via the Internet. Of course this is a non-issue if you sandbox properly or if you only use self developed spreadsheets. Since this is not the case for everyone (see the discussion at lwn.net), a GPG signature based trust model for spreadsheet files has been introduced. It ensures that only your own trusted files are executed on loading. Untrusted files are displayed in safe mode. You can trust a file manually. Inspect carefully.

Pyspread screenshot

requirements Pyspread runs on Linux, Windows and *nix platforms with GTK+ support. There are reports that it works with MacOS X as well. If you would like to contribute by testing on OS X please contact me.

Dependencies

Highly recommended for full functionality

  • PyMe >=0.8.1, Note for Windows™ users: If you want to use signatures without compiling PyMe try out Gpg4win.
  • gmpy >=1.1.0 and
  • rpy >=1.0.3.
maturity Pyspread is in early Beta release. This means that the core functionality is fully implemented but the program needs testing and polish.

and from the wiki

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/pyspread/index.php?title=Main_Page

a spreadsheet with more powerful functions and data structures that are accessible inside each cell. Something like Python that empowers you to do things quickly. And yes, it should be free and it should run on Linux as well as on Windows. I looked around and found nothing that suited me. Therefore, I started pyspread.

Concept

  • Each cell accepts any input that works in a Python command line.
  • The inputs are parsed and evaluated by Python’s eval command.
  • The result objects are accessible via a 3D numpy object array.
  • String representations of the result objects are displayed in the cells.

Benefits

  • Each cell returns a Python object. This object can be anything including arrays and third party library objects.
  • Generator expressions can be used efficiently for data manipulation.
  • Efficient numpy slicing is used.
  • numpy methods are accessible for the data.

Installation

  1. Download the pyspread tarball or zip and unzip at a convenient place
  2. In case you do not have it already get and install Python, wxpython and numpy
If you want the examples to work, install gmpy, R and rpy
Really do check the version requirements that are mentioned on http://pyspread.sf.net
  1. Get install privileges (e.g. become root)
  2. Change into the directory and type
python setup.py install
Windows: Replace “python” with your Python interpreter (absolute path)
  1. Become normal user again
  2. Start pyspread by typing
pyspread
  1. Enjoy

Links

Next on Spreadsheet wishlist-

a MSI bundle /Windows Self Installer which has all dependencies bundled in it-linking to PostGresSQL 😉 etc

way to go Mr Martin Manns

mmanns < at > gmx < dot > net

LibreOffice News and Google Musings

Tux, the Linux penguin
Image via Wikipedia

Official Bloggers on LibreOffice- http://planet.documentfoundation.org/

Note- for some strange reason I continue to be on top ranked LibreOffice blogs- maybe because I write more on the software itself than on Oracle politics or coffee spillovers.

LibreOffice Beta 2  is ready and I just installed it on Windows 7 – works nice- and I somehow think open Office and Google needs an  example to stop being so scary on cautioning—— hey,hey it’s a  beta – (do you see Oracle saying this release is a beta or Windows saying hey this Windows Vista is a beta for Windows 7- No right?)-

see screenshot of solver in  LibreOffice spreadsheet -works just fine.

We cant wait for Chromium OS and LibreOffice integration (or Google Docs-LibreOffice integration)  so Google starts thinking on those lines (of course

Google also needs to ramp up Google Storage and Google Predict API– but dude are you sure you wanna take on Amazon, Oracle and MS and Yahoo and Apple at the same time. Dear Herr Schmidt- Last German Guy who did that ,  ended up in a bunker in Berlin. (Ever since I had to pay 50 euros as Airline Transit fee -yes Indian passport holders have to do that in Germany- I am kind of non objective on that issue)

Google Management is busy nowadays thinking of trying to beat Facebook -hint -hint-

-buy out the biggest app makers of Facebook apps and create an api for Facebook info download and upload into Orkut –maybe invest like an angel in that startup called Diaspora http://www.joindiaspora.com/) see-

Back to the topic (and there are enough people blogging on Google should or shouldnt do)

-LibreOffice aesthetically rocks! It has a cool feel.

More news- The Wiki is up and awaits you at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation

And there is a general pow-wow scheduled at http://www.oookwv.de/ for the Open Office Congress (Kongress)

As you can see I used the Chrome Extension for Google Translate for an instant translation from German into English (though it still needs some work,  Herr Translator)

Back to actually working on LibreOffice- if Word and Powerpoint is all you do- save some money for Christmas and download it today from

So what's new in R 2.12.0

PoissonCDF
Image via Wikipedia

and as per http://cran.r-project.org/src/base/NEWS

the answer is plenty is new in the newR.

While you and me, were busy writing and reading blogs, or generally writing code for earning more money, or our own research- Uncle Peter D and his band of merry men have been really busy in a much more upgraded R.

————————————–

CHANGES————————-

NEW FEATURES:

    • Reading a packages's CITATION file now defaults to ASCII rather
      than Latin-1: a package with a non-ASCII CITATION file should
      declare an encoding in its DESCRIPTION file and use that encoding
      for the CITATION file.

    • difftime() now defaults to the "tzone" attribute of "POSIXlt"
      objects rather than to the current timezone as set by the default
      for the tz argument.  (Wish of PR#14182.)

    • pretty() is now generic, with new methods for "Date" and "POSIXt"
      classes (based on code contributed by Felix Andrews).

    • unique() and match() are now faster on character vectors where
      all elements are in the global CHARSXP cache and have unmarked
      encoding (ASCII).  Thanks to Matthew Dowle for suggesting
      improvements to the way the hash code is generated in unique.c.

    • The enquote() utility, in use internally, is exported now.

    • .C() and .Fortran() now map non-zero return values (other than
      NA_LOGICAL) for logical vectors to TRUE: it has been an implicit
      assumption that they are treated as true.

    • The print() methods for "glm" and "lm" objects now insert
      linebreaks in long calls in the same way that the print() methods
      for "summary.[g]lm" objects have long done.  This does change the
      layout of the examples for a number of packages, e.g. MASS.
      (PR#14250)

    • constrOptim() can now be used with method "SANN".  (PR#14245)

      It gains an argument hessian to be passed to optim(), which
      allows all the ... arguments to be intended for f() and grad().
      (PR#14071)

    • curve() now allows expr to be an object of mode "expression" as
      well as "call" and "function".

    • The "POSIX[cl]t" methods for Axis() have been replaced by a
      single method for "POSIXt".

      There are no longer separate plot() methods for "POSIX[cl]t" and
      "Date": the default method has been able to handle those classes
      for a long time.  This _inter alia_ allows a single date-time
      object to be supplied, the wish of PR#14016.

      The methods had a different default ("") for xlab.

    • Classes "POSIXct", "POSIXlt" and "difftime" have generators
      .POSIXct(), .POSIXlt() and .difftime().  Package authors are
      advised to make use of them (they are available from R 2.11.0) to
      proof against planned future changes to the classes.

      The ordering of the classes has been changed, so "POSIXt" is now
      the second class.  See the document ‘Updating packages for
      changes in R 2.12.x’ on  for
      the consequences for a handful of CRAN packages.

    • The "POSIXct" method of as.Date() allows a timezone to be
      specified (but still defaults to UTC).

    • New list2env() utility function as an inverse of
      as.list() and for fast multi-assign() to existing
      environment.  as.environment() is now generic and uses list2env()
      as list method.

    • There are several small changes to output which ‘zap’ small
      numbers, e.g. in printing quantiles of residuals in summaries
      from "lm" and "glm" fits, and in test statisics in print.anova().

    • Special names such as "dim", "names", etc, are now allowed as
      slot names of S4 classes, with "class" the only remaining
      exception.

    • File .Renviron can have architecture-specific versions such as
      .Renviron.i386 on systems with sub-architectures.

    • installed.packages() has a new argument subarch to filter on
      sub-architecture.

    • The summary() method for packageStatus() now has a separate
      print() method.

    • The default summary() method returns an object inheriting from
      class "summaryDefault" which has a separate print() method that
      calls zapsmall() for numeric/complex values.

    • The startup message now includes the platform and if used,
      sub-architecture: this is useful where different
      (sub-)architectures run on the same OS.

    • The getGraphicsEvent() mechanism now allows multiple windows to
      return graphics events, through the new functions
      setGraphicsEventHandlers(), setGraphicsEventEnv(), and
      getGraphicsEventEnv().  (Currently implemented in the windows()
      and X11() devices.)

    • tools::texi2dvi() gains an index argument, mainly for use by R
      CMD Rd2pdf.

      It avoids the use of texindy by texinfo's texi2dvi >= 1.157,
      since that does not emulate 'makeindex' well enough to avoid
      problems with special characters (such as (, {, !) in indices.

    • The ability of readLines() and scan() to re-encode inputs to
      marked UTF-8 strings on Windows since R 2.7.0 is extended to
      non-UTF-8 locales on other OSes.

    • scan() gains a fileEncoding argument to match read.table().

    • points() and lines() gain "table" methods to match plot().  (Wish
      of PR#10472.)

    • Sys.chmod() allows argument mode to be a vector, recycled along
      paths.

    • There are |, & and xor() methods for classes "octmode" and
      "hexmode", which work bitwise.

    • Environment variables R_DVIPSCMD, R_LATEXCMD, R_MAKEINDEXCMD,
      R_PDFLATEXCMD are no longer used nor set in an R session.  (With
      the move to tools::texi2dvi(), the conventional environment
      variables LATEX, MAKEINDEX and PDFLATEX will be used.
      options("dvipscmd") defaults to the value of DVIPS, then to
      "dvips".)

    • New function isatty() to see if terminal connections are
      redirected.

    • summaryRprof() returns the sampling interval in component
      sample.interval and only returns in by.self data for functions
      with non-zero self times.

    • print(x) and str(x) now indicate if an empty list x is named.

    • install.packages() and remove.packages() with lib unspecified and
      multiple libraries in .libPaths() inform the user of the library
      location used with a message rather than a warning.

    • There is limited support for multiple compressed streams on a
      file: all of [bgx]zfile() allow streams to be appended to an
      existing file, but bzfile() reads only the first stream.

    • Function person() in package utils now uses a given/family scheme
      in preference to first/middle/last, is vectorized to handle an
      arbitrary number of persons, and gains a role argument to specify
      person roles using a controlled vocabulary (the MARC relator
      terms).

    • Package utils adds a new "bibentry" class for representing and
      manipulating bibliographic information in enhanced BibTeX style,
      unifying and enhancing the previously existing mechanisms.

    • A bibstyle() function has been added to the tools package with
      default JSS style for rendering "bibentry" objects, and a
      mechanism for registering other rendering styles.

    • Several aspects of the display of text help are now customizable
      using the new Rd2txt_options() function.
      options("help_text_width") is no longer used.

    • Added \href tag to the Rd format, to allow hyperlinks to URLs
      without displaying the full URL.

    • Added \newcommand and \renewcommand tags to the Rd format, to
      allow user-defined macros.

    • New toRd() generic in the tools package to convert objects to
      fragments of Rd code, and added "fragment" argument to Rd2txt(),
      Rd2HTML(), and Rd2latex() to support it.

    • Directory R_HOME/share/texmf now follows the TDS conventions, so
      can be set as a texmf tree (‘root directory’ in MiKTeX parlance).

    • S3 generic functions now use correct S4 inheritance when
      dispatching on an S4 object.  See ?Methods, section on “Methods
      for S3 Generic Functions” for recommendations and details.

    • format.pval() gains a ... argument to pass arguments such as
      nsmall to format().  (Wish of PR#9574)

    • legend() supports title.adj.  (Wish of PR#13415)

    • Added support for subsetting "raster" objects, plus assigning to
      a subset, conversion to a matrix (of colour strings), and
      comparisons (== and !=).

    • Added a new parseLatex() function (and related functions
      deparseLatex() and latexToUtf8()) to support conversion of
      bibliographic entries for display in R.

    • Text rendering of \itemize in help uses a Unicode bullet in UTF-8
      and most single-byte Windows locales.

    • Added support for polygons with holes to the graphics engine.
      This is implemented for the pdf(), postscript(),
      x11(type="cairo"), windows(), and quartz() devices (and
      associated raster formats), but not for x11(type="Xlib") or
      xfig() or pictex().  The user-level interface is the polypath()
      function in graphics and grid.path() in grid.

    • File NEWS is now generated at installation with a slightly
      different format: it will be in UTF-8 on platforms using UTF-8,
      and otherwise in ASCII.  There is also a PDF version, NEWS.pdf,
      installed at the top-level of the R distribution.

    • kmeans(x, 1) now works.  Further, kmeans now returns between and
      total sum of squares.

    • arrayInd() and which() gain an argument useNames.  For arrayInd,
      the default is now false, for speed reasons.

    • As is done for closures, the default print method for the formula
      class now displays the associated environment if it is not the
      global environment.

    • A new facility has been added for inserting code into a package
      without re-installing it, to facilitate testing changes which can
      be selectively added and backed out.  See ?insertSource.

    • New function readRenviron to (re-)read files in the format of
      ~/.Renviron and Renviron.site.

    • require() will now return FALSE (and not fail) if loading the
      package or one of its dependencies fails.

    • aperm() now allows argument perm to be a character vector when
      the array has named dimnames (as the results of table() calls
      do).  Similarly, array() allows MARGIN to be a character vector.
      (Based on suggestions of Michael Lachmann.)

    • Package utils now exports and documents functions
      aspell_package_Rd_files() and aspell_package_vignettes() for
      spell checking package Rd files and vignettes using Aspell,
      Ispell or Hunspell.

    • Package news can now be given in Rd format, and news() prefers
      these inst/NEWS.Rd files to old-style plain text NEWS or
      inst/NEWS files.

    • New simple function packageVersion().

    • The PCRE library has been updated to version 8.10.

    • The standard Unix-alike terminal interface declares its name to
      readline as 'R', so that can be used for conditional sections in
      ~/.inputrc files.

    • ‘Writing R Extensions’ now stresses that the standard sections in
      .Rd files (other than \alias, \keyword and \note) are intended to
      be unique, and the conversion tools now drop duplicates with a
      warning.

      The .Rd conversion tools also warn about an unrecognized type in
      a \docType section.

    • ecdf() objects now have a quantile() method.

    • format() methods for date-time objects now attempt to make use of
      a "tzone" attribute with "%Z" and "%z" formats, but it is not
      always possible.  (Wish of PR#14358.)

    • tools::texi2dvi(file, clean = TRUE) now works in more cases (e.g.
      where emulation is used and when file is not in the current
      directory).

    • New function droplevels() to remove unused factor levels.

    • system(command, intern = TRUE) now gives an error on a Unix-alike
      (as well as on Windows) if command cannot be run.  It reports a
      non-success exit status from running command as a warning.

      On a Unix-alike an attempt is made to return the actual exit
      status of the command in system(intern = FALSE): previously this
      had been system-dependent but on POSIX-compliant systems the
      value return was 256 times the status.

    • system() has a new argument ignore.stdout which can be used to
      (portably) ignore standard output.

    • system(intern = TRUE) and pipe() connections are guaranteed to be
      avaliable on all builds of R.

    • Sys.which() has been altered to return "" if the command is not
      found (even on Solaris).

    • A facility for defining reference-based S4 classes (in the OOP
      style of Java, C++, etc.) has been added experimentally to
      package methods; see ?ReferenceClasses.

    • The predict method for "loess" fits gains an na.action argument
      which defaults to na.pass rather than the previous default of
      na.omit.

      Predictions from "loess" fits are now named from the row names of
      newdata.

    • Parsing errors detected during Sweave() processing will now be
      reported referencing their original location in the source file.

    • New adjustcolor() utility, e.g., for simple translucent color
      schemes.

    • qr() now has a trivial lm method with a simple (fast) validity
      check.

    • An experimental new programming model has been added to package
      methods for reference (OOP-style) classes and methods.  See
      ?ReferenceClasses.

    • bzip2 has been updated to version 1.0.6 (bug-fix release).
      --with-system-bzlib now requires at least version 1.0.6.

    • R now provides jss.cls and jss.bst (the class and bib style file
      for the Journal of Statistical Software) as well as RJournal.bib
      and Rnews.bib, and R CMD ensures that the .bst and .bib files are
      found by BibTeX.

    • Functions using the TAR environment variable no longer quote the
      value when making system calls.  This allows values such as tar
      --force-local, but does require additional quotes in, e.g., TAR =
      "'/path with spaces/mytar'".

  DEPRECATED & DEFUNCT:

    • Supplying the parser with a character string containing both
      octal/hex and Unicode escapes is now an error.

    • File extension .C for C++ code files in packages is now defunct.

    • R CMD check no longer supports configuration files containing
      Perl configuration variables: use the environment variables
      documented in ‘R Internals’ instead.

    • The save argument of require() now defaults to FALSE and save =
      TRUE is now deprecated.  (This facility is very rarely actually
      used, and was superseded by the Depends field of the DESCRIPTION
      file long ago.)

    • R CMD check --no-latex is deprecated in favour of --no-manual.

    • R CMD Sd2Rd is formally deprecated and will be removed in R
      2.13.0.

  PACKAGE INSTALLATION:

    • install.packages() has a new argument libs_only to optionally
      pass --libs-only to R CMD INSTALL and works analogously for
      Windows binary installs (to add support for 64- or 32-bit
      Windows).

    • When sub-architectures are in use, the installed architectures
      are recorded in the Archs field of the DESCRIPTION file.  There
      is a new default filter, "subarch", in available.packages() to
      make use of this.

      Code is compiled in a copy of the src directory when a package is
      installed for more than one sub-architecture: this avoid problems
      with cleaning the sources between building sub-architectures.

    • R CMD INSTALL --libs-only no longer overrides the setting of
      locking, so a previous version of the package will be restored
      unless --no-lock is specified.

  UTILITIES:

    • R CMD Rprof|build|check are now based on R rather than Perl
      scripts.  The only remaining Perl scripts are the deprecated R
      CMD Sd2Rd and install-info.pl (used only if install-info is not
      found) as well as some maintainer-mode-only scripts.

      *NB:* because these have been completely rewritten, users should
      not expect undocumented details of previous implementations to
      have been duplicated.

      R CMD no longer manipulates the environment variables PERL5LIB
      and PERLLIB.

    • R CMD check has a new argument --extra-arch to confine tests to
      those needed to check an additional sub-architecture.

      Its check for “Subdirectory 'inst' contains no files” is more
      thorough: it looks for files, and warns if there are only empty
      directories.

      Environment variables such as R_LIBS and those used for
      customization can be set for the duration of checking _via_ a
      file ~/.R/check.Renviron (in the format used by .Renviron, and
      with sub-architecture specific versions such as
      ~/.R/check.Renviron.i386 taking precedence).

      There are new options --multiarch to check the package under all
      of the installed sub-architectures and --no-multiarch to confine
      checking to the sub-architecture under which check is invoked.
      If neither option is supplied, a test is done of installed
      sub-architectures and all those which can be run on the current
      OS are used.

      Unless multiple sub-architectures are selected, the install done
      by check for testing purposes is only of the current
      sub-architecture (_via_ R CMD INSTALL --no-multiarch).

      It will skip the check for non-ascii characters in code or data
      if the environment variables _R_CHECK_ASCII_CODE_ or
      _R_CHECK_ASCII_DATA_ are respectively set to FALSE.  (Suggestion
      of Vince Carey.)

    • R CMD build no longer creates an INDEX file (R CMD INSTALL does
      so), and --force removes (rather than overwrites) an existing
      INDEX file.

      It supports a file ~/.R/build.Renviron analogously to check.

      It now runs build-time \Sexpr expressions in help files.

    • R CMD Rd2dvi makes use of tools::texi2dvi() to process the
      package manual.  It is now implemented entirely in R (rather than
      partially as a shell script).

    • R CMD Rprof now uses utils::summaryRprof() rather than Perl.  It
      has new arguments to select one of the tables and to limit the
      number of entries printed.

    • R CMD Sweave now runs R with --vanilla so the environment setting
      of R_LIBS will always be used.

  C-LEVEL FACILITIES:

    • lang5() and lang6() (in addition to pre-existing lang[1-4]())
      convenience functions for easier construction of eval() calls.
      If you have your own definition, do wrap it inside #ifndef lang5
      .... #endif to keep it working with old and new R.

    • Header R.h now includes only the C headers it itself needs, hence
      no longer includes errno.h.  (This helps avoid problems when it
      is included from C++ source files.)

    • Headers Rinternals.h and R_ext/Print.h include the C++ versions
      of stdio.h and stdarg.h respectively if included from a C++
      source file.

  INSTALLATION:

    • A C99 compiler is now required, and more C99 language features
      will be used in the R sources.

    • Tcl/Tk >= 8.4 is now required (increased from 8.3).

    • System functions access, chdir and getcwd are now essential to
      configure R.  (In practice they have been required for some
      time.)

    • make check compares the output of the examples from several of
      the base packages to reference output rather than the previous
      output (if any).  Expect some differences due to differences in
      floating-point computations between platforms.

    • File NEWS is no longer in the sources, but generated as part of
      the installation.  The primary source for changes is now
      doc/NEWS.Rd.

    • The popen system call is now required to build R.  This ensures
      the availability of system(intern = TRUE), pipe() connections and
      printing from postscript().

    • The pkg-config file libR.pc now also works when R is installed
      using a sub-architecture.

    • R has always required a BLAS that conforms to IE60559 arithmetic,
      but after discovery of more real-world problems caused by a BLAS
      that did not, this is tested more thoroughly in this version.

  BUG FIXES:

    • Calls to selectMethod() by default no longer cache inherited
      methods.  This could previously corrupt methods used by as().

    • The densities of non-central chi-squared are now more accurate in
      some cases in the extreme tails, e.g. dchisq(2000, 2, 1000), as a
      series expansion was truncated too early.  (PR#14105)

    • pt() is more accurate in the left tail for ncp large, e.g.
      pt(-1000, 3, 200).  (PR#14069)

    • The default C function (R_binary) for binary ops now sets the S4
      bit in the result if either argument is an S4 object.  (PR#13209)

    • source(echo=TRUE) failed to echo comments that followed the last
      statement in a file.

    • S4 classes that contained one of "matrix", "array" or "ts" and
      also another class now accept superclass objects in new().  Also
      fixes failure to call validObject() for these classes.

    • Conditional inheritance defined by argument test in
      methods::setIs() will no longer be used in S4 method selection
      (caching these methods could give incorrect results).  See
      ?setIs.

    • The signature of an implicit generic is now used by setGeneric()
      when that does not use a definition nor explicitly set a
      signature.

    • A bug in callNextMethod() for some examples with "..." in the
      arguments has been fixed.  See file
      src/library/methods/tests/nextWithDots.R in the sources.

    • match(x, table) (and hence %in%) now treat "POSIXlt" consistently
      with, e.g., "POSIXct".

    • Built-in code dealing with environments (get(), assign(),
      parent.env(), is.environment() and others) now behave
      consistently to recognize S4 subclasses; is.name() also
      recognizes subclasses.

    • The abs.tol control parameter to nlminb() now defaults to 0.0 to
      avoid false declarations of convergence in objective functions
      that may go negative.

    • The standard Unix-alike termination dialog to ask whether to save
      the workspace takes a EOF response as n to avoid problems with a
      damaged terminal connection.  (PR#14332)

    • Added warn.unused argument to hist.default() to allow suppression
      of spurious warnings about graphical parameters used with
      plot=FALSE.  (PR#14341)

    • predict.lm(), summary.lm(), and indeed lm() itself had issues
      with residual DF in zero-weighted cases (the latter two only in
      connection with empty models). (Thanks to Bill Dunlap for
      spotting the predict() case.)

    • aperm() treated resize = NA as resize = TRUE.

    • constrOptim() now has an improved convergence criterion, notably
      for cases where the minimum was (very close to) zero; further,
      other tweaks inspired from code proposals by Ravi Varadhan.

    • Rendering of S3 and S4 methods in man pages has been corrected
      and made consistent across output formats.

    • Simple markup is now allowed in \title sections in .Rd files.

    • The behaviour of as.logical() on factors (to use the levels) was
      lost in R 2.6.0 and has been restored.

    • prompt() did not backquote some default arguments in the \usage
      section.  (Reported by Claudia Beleites.)

    • writeBin() disallows attempts to write 2GB or more in a single
      call. (PR#14362)

    • new() and getClass() will now work if Class is a subclass of
      "classRepresentation" and should also be faster in typical calls.

    • The summary() method for data frames makes a better job of names
      containing characters invalid in the current locale.

    • [[ sub-assignment for factors could create an invalid factor
      (reported by Bill Dunlap).

    • Negate(f) would not evaluate argument f until first use of
      returned function (reported by Olaf Mersmann).

    • quietly=FALSE is now also an optional argument of library(), and
      consequently, quietly is now propagated also for loading
      dependent packages, e.g., in require(*, quietly=TRUE).

    • If the loop variable in a for loop was deleted, it would be
      recreated as a global variable.  (Reported by Radford Neal; the
      fix includes his optimizations as well.)

    • Task callbacks could report the wrong expression when the task
      involved parsing new code. (PR#14368)

    • getNamespaceVersion() failed; this was an accidental change in
      2.11.0. (PR#14374)

    • identical() returned FALSE for external pointer objects even when
      the pointer addresses were the same.

    • L$a@x[] <- val did not duplicate in a case it should have.

    • tempfile() now always gives a random file name (even if the
      directory is specified) when called directly after startup and
      before the R RNG had been used.  (PR#14381)

    • quantile(type=6) behaved inconsistently.  (PR#14383)

    • backSpline(.) behaved incorrectly when the knot sequence was
      decreasing.  (PR#14386)

    • The reference BLAS included in R was assuming that 0*x and x*0
      were always zero (whereas they could be NA or NaN in IEC 60559
      arithmetic).  This was seen in results from tcrossprod, and for
      example that log(0) %*% 0 gave 0.

    • The calculation of whether text was completely outside the device
      region (in which case, you draw nothing) was wrong for screen
      devices (which have [0, 0] at top-left).  The symptom was (long)
      text disappearing when resizing a screen window (to make it
      smaller).  (PR#14391)

    • model.frame(drop.unused.levels = TRUE) did not take into account
      NA values of factors when deciding to drop levels. (PR#14393)

    • library.dynam.unload required an absolute path for libpath.
      (PR#14385)

      Both library() and loadNamespace() now record absolute paths for
      use by searchpaths() and getNamespaceInfo(ns, "path").

    • The self-starting model NLSstClosestX failed if some deviation
      was exactly zero.  (PR#14384)

    • X11(type = "cairo") (and other devices such as png using
      cairographics) and which use Pango font selection now work around
      a bug in Pango when very small fonts (those with sizes between 0
      and 1 in Pango's internal units) are requested.  (PR#14369)

    • Added workaround for the font problem with X11(type = "cairo")
      and similar on Mac OS X whereby italic and bold styles were
      interchanged.  (PR#13463 amongst many other reports.)

    • source(chdir = TRUE) failed to reset the working directory if it
      could not be determined - that is now an error.

    • Fix for crash of example(rasterImage) on x11(type="Xlib").

    • Force Quartz to bring the on-screen display up-to-date
      immediately before the snapshot is taken by grid.cap() in the
      Cocoa implementation. (PR#14260)

    • model.frame had an unstated 500 byte limit on variable names.
      (Example reported by Terry Therneau.)

    • The 256-byte limit on names is now documented.    • Subassignment by [, [[ or $ on an expression object with value
      NULL coerced the object to a list.

 

 

Libre Office

Some ambiguity about Libre Office and why it needed to change from Open Office- just when Open Office seemed so threatening on the desktop

FROM- http://www.documentfoundation.org/faq/

Q: So is this a breakaway project?

A: Not at all. The Document Foundation will continue to be focused on developing, supporting, and promoting the same software, and it’s very much business as usual. We are simply moving to a new and more appropriate organisational model for the next decade – a logical development from Sun’s inspirational launch a decade ago.

Q: Why are you calling yourselves “The Document Foundation”?

A: For ten years we have used the same name – “OpenOffice.org” – for both the Community and the software. We’ve decided it removes ambiguity to have a different name for the two, so the Community is now “The Document Foundation”, and the software “LibreOffice”. Note: there are other examples of this usage in the free software community – e.g. the Mozilla Foundation with the Firefox browser.

Q: Does this mean you intend to develop other pieces of software?

A: We would like to have that possibility open to us in the future…

Q: And why are you calling the software “LibreOffice” instead of “OpenOffice.org”?

A: The OpenOffice.org trademark is owned by Oracle Corporation. Our hope is that Oracle will donate this to the Foundation, along with the other assets it holds in trust for the Community, in due course, once legal etc issues are resolved. However, we need to continue work in the meantime – hence “LibreOffice” (“free office”).

Q: Why are you building a new web infrastructure?

A: Since Oracle’s takeover of Sun Microsystems, the Community has been under “notice to quit” from our previous Collabnet infrastructure. With today’s announcement of a Foundation, we now have an entity which can own our emerging new infrastructure.

Q: What does this announcement mean to other derivatives of OpenOffice.org?

A: We want The Document Foundation to be open to code contributions from as many people as possible. We are delighted to announce that the enhancements produced by the Go-OOo team will be merged into LibreOffice, effective immediately. We hope that others will follow suit.

Q: What difference will this make to the commercial products produced by Oracle Corporation, IBM, Novell, Red Flag, etc?

A: The Document Foundation cannot answer for other bodies. However, there is nothing in the licence arrangements to stop companies continuing to release commercial derivatives of LibreOffice. The new Foundation will also mean companies can contribute funds or resources without worries that they may be helping a commercial competitor.

Q: What difference will The Document Foundation make to developers?

A: The Document Foundation sets out deliberately to be as developer friendly as possible. We do not demand that contributors share their copyright with us. People will gain status in our community based on peer evaluation of their contributions – not by who their employer is.

Q: What difference will The Document Foundation make to users of LibreOffice?

A: LibreOffice is The Document Foundation’s reason for existence. We do not have and will not have a commercial product which receives preferential treatment. We only have one focus – delivering the best free office suite for our users – LibreOffice.

—————————————————————————————————-

Non Microsoft and Non Oracle vendors are indeed going to find it useful the possiblities of bundling a free Libre Office that reduces the total cost of ownership for analytics software. Right now, some of the best free advertising for Microsoft OS and Office is done by enterprise software vendors who create Windows Only Products and enable MS Office integration better than  Open Office integration. This is done citing user demand- but it is a chicken egg dilemma- as functionality leads to enhanced demand. Microsoft on the other hand is aware of this dependence and has made SQL Server and SQL Analytics (besides investing in analytics startups like Revolution Analytics) along with it’s own infrastructure -Azure Cloud Platform/EC2 instances.