
New Vesion of Windows Batchfiles for R

batchfiles 0.4-2 consists of a set of Windows .bat utilities and other
scripts that run R and associated programs by finding R in the
registry so that no paths need be set -- a major source of error
during installation.  Also it implies that paths which might otherwise
need to be updated when you upgrade R do not need to be.  The tools
automatically find the new registry entry.

The utilities are Windows batch files or javascript files without
dependencies.  Just place those you want or all of them anywhere in
your path and they instantly become available to Windows console
sessions.  No setting of paths or other formal installation is
required.

This version of batchfiles has only been tested on Windows Vista but
most of the utilities may work on earlier versions as well.  Version
0.3-2 was only tested on Windows XP.

NEW

1. Stangle.bat

A new command Stangle.bat is now available that is similar to
Sweave.bat except it runs Stangle.  Like Sweave.bat, it can be run
without arguments to get help.  Sweave.bat and Stangle.bat are
actually the same file.  Each queries the name by which it was called
in order to determine what to do.  Like Sweave.bat, Stangle.bat does
not depend on rtools.

2. rbatchfilesrc.bat

For those situations where use of the registry is not desirable the
batchfiles have supported certain environment variables that can be
set in its place.  New to this version is an optional second facility
for those situations where the registry is not used.   As with the
setting of environment variables it can be used to override the
registry values and heuristics or it can be used to have different
versions of R automatically used by different projects.

For this new second facility the user can place rbatchfilesrc.bat in
the current directory or %userprofile% directory or the same directory
as the batchfiles and the various batchfiles will get their
definitions from that file instead of looking in the registry.  A
typical rbatchfilesrc.bat might be 3 lines long and look like this:

		set R_HOME=C:\Program Files\R\R-2.7.0
		set R_TOOLS=C:\Rtools
		set R_MIKTEX=C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.7\miktex\bin

Most people will not need this facility and will instead use the
automatic registry lookup which completely avoids the need to specify
path names but for situations as described this facility may be of
use.

The batchfiles are available on CRAN in the contributed extras area.
For more information see the batchfiles home page at:

	http://batchfiles.googlecode.com

