5 ms·

Modern Text Features in R

145 points by danso 6y ago

chunkyks 6y ago
Is tidyverse still fundamentally license incompatible with everything? Last I checked, it included both gpl2-only, and gplv3+, modules. That prevented my company from releasing code that we wanted to. (this is really a pervasive problem across the r ecosystem, but tidyverse really seals the deal because it's so popular)
- danso 6y ago
  R itself is GPL2/GPL3: https://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#Can-I-use-R-for-commercial-purposes_003f https://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#Can-I-use-R-fo...
  - linspace 6y ago
    I think that a compiler or interpreter using GPL does not affect you in the same way as a library.
    - jghn 6y ago
      Right. I'm not sure there's ever been definitive rulings on this but the viewpoint in the R community has been that it is the licensing is at the package level in terms of what a user would care about. As an example, in the early days there was an intentional decision by the Bioconductor group to use more permissive licenses in order to enable corporate use and thus help with adoption.
- Tarq0n 6y ago
  Are you bundling dependencies? In the R ecosystem you can just make users download libraries themselves.
- kec 6y ago
  A quick look and all the packages are MIT except for purrr which is gpl2.
  - JHonaker 6y ago
    There's a mix of GPL-2, GPL-3, and MIT.
- hadley 6y ago
  We are in the middle of a process to systematically re-license as much as possible as MIT. More on that soon.
  - chunkyks 6y ago
    I had noticed some threads about this on stringi/r. Glad to hear its more systemic!
  - airstrike 6y ago
    Thanks, Hadley. I really just wanted to say you're amazing, on the off chance nobody has told you that today.
- asdff 6y ago
  The good news is I don't think there is a feature in the tidyverse you couldn't do with base R, albeit in an "R way." I think the main sell of tidyverse is the sexier plots from ggplot2 and some quality of life functions. Maybe others can comment if there is more there. The annoyance of 85% of stack overflow R comments starting off with sourcing the tidyverse library was enough to push me away and develop a base R solution whenever I had an issue.
  - niekmaas 6y ago
    I think the appeal to the tidyverse "universe" is the readability of the code. Especially to novel users of R (and there are a lot of people in science that have to generate a plot once a month or so). ggplot2 works fine if you only use that package without the rest of tidyverse. I personally use the data.table package a lot and than generate plots using ggplot2. Stackoverflow is indeed very much focused on tidyverse packages which is a pity as indeed base R can solve so many problems posted too without the need of additional packages.
    - asdff 6y ago
      That's the thing of it, too. It's pretty looking code, but it's not R. It's its own foo you now have to spend time learning on top of R.
- neolog 6y ago
  You couldn't release your code under GPLv3?
elsherbini 6y ago
Very cool that you can register font names that have styles attached. And all of the ligature support seems great for adding math expressions to your plots.
the_gastropod 6y ago
I've been wanting to learn R for a bit. Does anyone know of any good resources for learning the basics?
- jarenmf 6y ago
  This is a good start for the basics https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/r/ https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/r/
- nsm 6y ago
  As someone who already knows how to program, I've really liked https://r4ds.had.co.nz/index.html https://r4ds.had.co.nz/index.html. It jumps right into visualization from the very beginning, which is great as a feedback mechanism, and also highlights R's strengths (ggplot2).
  - vharuck 6y ago
    This is definitely a great intro to the parts of R that are relevant for all types of analysis. After you get comfortable with this and want to do some domain-specific analysis, check out the R Task Views[0] on the official site. You can read brief summaries of what packages are available for different analysis tasks. Really useful, considering how many packages are on the official repository (CRAN). To see more of what a package does and how to use it, look for vignettes on the package description page. For example, the `forecast` package[1] includes a journal article. You could also look on bookdown.org, which showcases some online books made using the titular package. The are a lot of "Doing X with R" guides among them. [0] https://cran.r-project.org/web/views/ https://cran.r-project.org/web/views/ [1] https://cran.r-project.org/package=forecast https://cran.r-project.org/package=forecast
- wittjeff 6y ago
  https://www.edx.org/course/data-science-r-basics https://www.edx.org/course/data-science-r-basics Disclosure: I work for edX.
- phillc73 6y ago
  Pete Dalgaard's Introductory Statistics with R is a good book, but not free online as far as I know.[1] Or go to the source with An Introduction to R[2][3] I also enjoyed Norm Matloff's fasteR tutorial.[4] [1] https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387790534 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387790534 [2] https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-intro.pdf https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-intro.pdf [3] https://intro2r.com/the-aim-of-this-book.html https://intro2r.com/the-aim-of-this-book.html [4] https://github.com/matloff/fasteR https://github.com/matloff/fasteR
SubiculumCode 6y ago
Can this integrate with ggplot2?
- jcheng 6y ago
  Yes, the example in the blog post uses ggplot2.
Tarq0n 6y ago
Thomas Pedersen is one of the less well known contributors to the R ecosystem. His work on fundamentals like graphics rendering is the kind of thing that can be pretty thankless and I think he deserves a ton of credit for his combination of technical skills and focus on user experience. The gganimate package used for animating plots is also by him.

145 points by danso 6y ago

Is tidyverse still fundamentally license incompatible with everything? Last I checked, it included both gpl2-only, and gplv3+, modules. That prevented my company from releasing code that we wanted to. (this is really a pervasive problem across the r ecosystem, but tidyverse really seals the deal because it's so popular)

danso 6y ago
R itself is GPL2/GPL3: https://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#Can-I-use-R-for-commercial-purposes_003f https://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#Can-I-use-R-fo...
- linspace 6y ago
  I think that a compiler or interpreter using GPL does not affect you in the same way as a library.
  - jghn 6y ago
    Right. I'm not sure there's ever been definitive rulings on this but the viewpoint in the R community has been that it is the licensing is at the package level in terms of what a user would care about. As an example, in the early days there was an intentional decision by the Bioconductor group to use more permissive licenses in order to enable corporate use and thus help with adoption.
Tarq0n 6y ago
Are you bundling dependencies? In the R ecosystem you can just make users download libraries themselves.
kec 6y ago
A quick look and all the packages are MIT except for purrr which is gpl2.
- JHonaker 6y ago
  There's a mix of GPL-2, GPL-3, and MIT.
hadley 6y ago
We are in the middle of a process to systematically re-license as much as possible as MIT. More on that soon.
- chunkyks 6y ago
  I had noticed some threads about this on stringi/r. Glad to hear its more systemic!
- airstrike 6y ago
  Thanks, Hadley. I really just wanted to say you're amazing, on the off chance nobody has told you that today.
asdff 6y ago
The good news is I don't think there is a feature in the tidyverse you couldn't do with base R, albeit in an "R way." I think the main sell of tidyverse is the sexier plots from ggplot2 and some quality of life functions. Maybe others can comment if there is more there. The annoyance of 85% of stack overflow R comments starting off with sourcing the tidyverse library was enough to push me away and develop a base R solution whenever I had an issue.
- niekmaas 6y ago
  I think the appeal to the tidyverse "universe" is the readability of the code. Especially to novel users of R (and there are a lot of people in science that have to generate a plot once a month or so). ggplot2 works fine if you only use that package without the rest of tidyverse. I personally use the data.table package a lot and than generate plots using ggplot2. Stackoverflow is indeed very much focused on tidyverse packages which is a pity as indeed base R can solve so many problems posted too without the need of additional packages.
  - asdff 6y ago
    That's the thing of it, too. It's pretty looking code, but it's not R. It's its own foo you now have to spend time learning on top of R.
neolog 6y ago
You couldn't release your code under GPLv3?

elsherbini 6y ago

Very cool that you can register font names that have styles attached. And all of the ligature support seems great for adding math expressions to your plots.

the_gastropod 6y ago

I've been wanting to learn R for a bit. Does anyone know of any good resources for learning the basics?

jarenmf 6y ago
This is a good start for the basics https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/r/ https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/r/
nsm 6y ago
As someone who already knows how to program, I've really liked https://r4ds.had.co.nz/index.html https://r4ds.had.co.nz/index.html. It jumps right into visualization from the very beginning, which is great as a feedback mechanism, and also highlights R's strengths (ggplot2).
- vharuck 6y ago
  This is definitely a great intro to the parts of R that are relevant for all types of analysis. After you get comfortable with this and want to do some domain-specific analysis, check out the R Task Views[0] on the official site. You can read brief summaries of what packages are available for different analysis tasks. Really useful, considering how many packages are on the official repository (CRAN). To see more of what a package does and how to use it, look for vignettes on the package description page. For example, the `forecast` package[1] includes a journal article. You could also look on bookdown.org, which showcases some online books made using the titular package. The are a lot of "Doing X with R" guides among them. [0] https://cran.r-project.org/web/views/ https://cran.r-project.org/web/views/ [1] https://cran.r-project.org/package=forecast https://cran.r-project.org/package=forecast
wittjeff 6y ago
https://www.edx.org/course/data-science-r-basics https://www.edx.org/course/data-science-r-basics Disclosure: I work for edX.
phillc73 6y ago
Pete Dalgaard's Introductory Statistics with R is a good book, but not free online as far as I know.[1] Or go to the source with An Introduction to R[2][3] I also enjoyed Norm Matloff's fasteR tutorial.[4] [1] https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387790534 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387790534 [2] https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-intro.pdf https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-intro.pdf [3] https://intro2r.com/the-aim-of-this-book.html https://intro2r.com/the-aim-of-this-book.html [4] https://github.com/matloff/fasteR https://github.com/matloff/fasteR

SubiculumCode 6y ago

Can this integrate with ggplot2?

jcheng 6y ago
Yes, the example in the blog post uses ggplot2.

Tarq0n 6y ago

Thomas Pedersen is one of the less well known contributors to the R ecosystem. His work on fundamentals like graphics rendering is the kind of thing that can be pretty thankless and I think he deserves a ton of credit for his combination of technical skills and focus on user experience. The gganimate package used for animating plots is also by him.