FlashMXML

FlashMXML_0.2-0.tar.gz (07 February 2010)

This package provides

• various graphics devices for R that generate the plot as ActionScript code that can be displayed within a Flash application, and
• tools to generate MXML content from R data
• an R function for compiling MXML files to SWF binaries to be run by a Flash Player in a Web browser or stand-alone.

This does not make R available to the Flash run-time engine. The connection between R and Flash is when we generate the Flash code from within R to later render the plots in Flash quite separately.

The mxmlDevice() function creates an MXML application document (and compiles it by default) containing the ActionScript code to display the document. One can augment this MXML document after the device has been closed to annotate the plot with interactive components, event handlers, etc.

The flash() function implements a device that produces just the ActionScript code for the plot. It generates code that creates ActionScript objects of different classes such as RCircle, RLine, RText, RPolyline, RPolygon. These can be redrawn, moved, transformed, etc. and each has an RGContext object that represents the graphical parameters. These can be changed and the object redrawn. This device forms the basis of the mxmlDevice() device which adds processing of the MXML file.

A third device flashDevice is a simpler, more direct rendering of the R plot in Flash. It generates the ActionScript code that draws the lines, circles, polygons, etc. using simpler Sprite objects. The objects do not have knowledge of the original R graphics parameters or the coordinates of their path(s).

This is a very early release that is intended as a prototype and an example of how we might go about leveraging R's graphics from Flash. The graphics device works, but needs some work with respect to fonts and positioning of text. I hope that others will take this and experiment and develop better versions or feedback changes to me to improve this version. All of the code is in R as we use the RGraphicsDevice package. This makes it quite easy to explore alternative implementations of different aspects or write an entirely new device.

Documentation

Some examples of post-processing the MXML/ActionScript code to provide interaction. Here we describe how to do this in ActionScript code.

And some of the generated code. View the swf files for running code, mxml files for the code generated from R.

Annotation in R

This provides examples of how we can post-process the Flash plot in R, rather than ActionScript. Currently we annotate the ActionScript code, but the generation of this code is in R. In the future, we may develop a generic annotation mechanism where one annotates abstract descriptions of the plot elements.

Some notes/ideas on implementation.

R help files

There are many more classes and functions that are not exported but should be of interest to anyone wanting to extend this package.

Related Packages

• the RGraphicsDevice provides a framework for implementing R graphics devices entirely within R, avoiding the need for C code.
• the SVGAnnotation package uses SVG to display R graphics and provides many facilities for post-processing the regular R graphics to provide tooltips, interaction, animation and GUI components on the plots.
• the RGraphicsDevice contains an example R graphics device that generates JavaScript code for use in an HTML/JavaScript canvas element of an HTML document.