No need to talk to strangers Cooperation of Interactive Software with R as Moderator

Interactive software is very helpful for exploratory analysis of data, but most packages are optimized only for a specific field of work. Interaction between the various projects is limited. On the other hand very flexible statistical software, such as R, S or S-plus exist covering the needs of almost all fields, but without support for interactive graphics. This paper describes our experience with different approaches linking R with interactive software using flat files and the Omegahat interface. Such linking directly extends capabilities of the interactive software without the need for special communication layers such as CORBA. We also show how such an interface can be used to implement cooperation between different interactive software packages with R as moderator. Practical examples are given based on our current projects Klimt and Mondrian.