This is probably a good time to mention on the BioC mailing list that we have developed a GUI interface to the limma package using the R tktcl library and tktcl extensions. The GUI package package is publicly available from http://bioinf.wehi.edu.au/limmaGUI. The package currently takes users from data input through data analysis to differential expression with two-color microarrays. It runs on most platforms that R runs on. It would be good to keep in touch about work on R and BioC user interfaces, real progress seems to being made now. Are you planning to make your visual basic interface to R publicly available? Regards Gordon At 02:11 AM 9/09/2003, Park, Richard wrote: >Hi Andrea, >I have spent sometime trying to create microarray analysis interfaces >between visual basic to R/S-plus/ArrayAnalyzer. What types of platforms >were you thinking of using to implement this idea? I have found that >creating interfaces in s-plus is sort of cumbersome and hard to adapt for >multi-step analyses of microarray experiments. > >ArrayAnalyzer makes use of java applets through an automation server to >power its interfaces, but it still is in its basic forms of guiding a >"simple" user to differential gene expression. I have seen a big need for >interfaces into R. One option of creating an interface into R could be >using the same tools they used for some of the packages in bioconductor >such as affy, or making use of an automation server of such as Dcom >created by Thomas Baier which is similar to automation server found in >S-plus. It allows for communication between visual basic (ms packages: >i.e. excel, access) as well as perl. > >Please let me know what your ideas are, I have spent a lot of time trying >to figure out how to help users easily access the power in R w/o having to >spend the time to learn the semantics of the language. I have a basic >interface created in visual basic that is currently keeping track of 350+ >microarray experiments and a simple "point and click" interface to guide >the user to create any data group from any of the 350 arrays into a basic >analysis format (making use of tools and algorithms w/in bioconductor). >regards, >Richard Park >Computational Data Analyzer - Immunology and Immunogenetics >Joslin Diabetes Center/ Harvard Medical School > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Andrea Splendiani [mailto:andrea.splendiani@unimib.it] >Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 11:5 AM >To: bioconductor@stat.math.ethz.ch >Subject: [BioC] Seeking collaboration for an opensource data >analysisinterface project > > >We are looking for people interested in an opensource data analysis >software that we would like to propose as a NEXT-Adventure project (we >are from Univ. Milano Bicocca, Italy. Dep. of Computer Science and Dep. >of Biotechnology and Bioengineering). >Obviously it would not make sense to replicate Bioconductor and R >efforts (that we think are excellent), our intention is to develop >mainly interfaces more intended to the end user, trying to make tools >present in Bioconductor more easily accessible. >So for this proposal we would like to have as a partner someone from >the Bioconductor community (should be from Europe). > >If anyone is interested in knowing more about this, please send me an >email. > >regards, >Andrea Splendiani