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spread We have designed and constructed an interactive spreadsheet

        interface to S/Splus that maintains the complete power and
        generality of the S language.  At user level, the interface
        behaves like the popular spreadsheet programs available for
        personal computers: one or more S data objects (matrices or
        three-way arrays) are displayed on the screen.  The user
        graphically (with mouse or cursor motion) identifies a cell
        for review, and possible updating, of its contents.  Macros
        containing arbitrary S expressions can be associated with
        the entire spread.frame or one of its cells.  The
        spreadsheet is designed in a modular fashion with
        device-specific methods for the display and updating of
        spreadsheet objects.  We include methods for two devices:
        the generic S graphics device and a character based device
        using the emacs 19 environment.
        Richard M. Heiberger (rmh@astro.ocis.temple.edu)
        Magnus Mengelbier (magnus@astro.ocis.temple.edu)

        The interface is described in
        \item Heiberger, Richard M., and Magnus Mengelbier (1995, to appear)
        ``Design of a Spreadsheet Interface for S,''
        {\it Proceedings of the American Statistical Association},
        Section on Statistical Graphics.

        This is placeholder announcement. The files will be
        available on statlib after one more level of testing.

Files in this distribution:

README          Abstract, file listing, and setup instructions.
sprd3d.how      Instructions for spread.frame users.

sprd-emc.s      S for emacs driver
sprd-grd.s      S for class="grade"
sprd-spr.s      S for class="spread"    This is the primary set of functions.
sprd-txt.s      S for graphics device driver based on text() command.

sprd-int.el     emacs lisp file
                Load this file into emacs 19 each time you start a
                spread.frame session.

gradexmp.s      S example

                        Setup Instructions

The emacs spreadsheet interface for S consists of four S files "sprd-*.s" and one emacs lisp file "sprd-int.el".

1. Create a new directory to store the four S files "sprd-*.s" and one emacs lisp file "sprd-int.el". I use "/disk5/rmh/sprd3d/". You might wish to place it under the directory where you store other S/Splus libraries.
2. Make a new .Data, "/disk5/rmh/sprd3d/.Data", start S/Splus, and source the four sprd-*.s files:

        > source("sprd-emc.s")
        > source("sprd-grd.s")
        > source("sprd-spr.s")
        > source("sprd-txt.s")
        > q()

3. The directory /disk5/rmh/sprd3d/ should now be treated as a library directory and should not be further touched. All further work using the spread.frames should be done in a different directory.

4. See the file sprd3d.how for user instructions. You may look at the file "gradexmp.s" for an example.