[ESS-bugs] tracking options(continue= *) etc ? {was "..Starting eval... hangs"}

[Stephen Eglen]

 > I actually had the same thought..
 > 
 > So, Stephen here tells how to do it "manually" :
 >     RoSp> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.ess.general/1835
 > 
 > {{Stephen: It would be phantastic if you could add this to the 
 > 	   ESS manual ...}}

I have added this text to the Bugs section of the manual:

   * Changes to the continutation prompt in R (e.g.  `options(continue
     = "    ")') are not automatically detected by ESS.  Hence, for
     now, the best thing is not to change the continuation prompt.  If
     you do change the continuation prompt, you will need to change
     accordingly the value of `inferior-ess-secondary-prompt' in
     `R-customize-alist'.




 > Of course, in principle, ESS could track even more than it does now:
 > it currently already looks at  "?"  "help("  "library(" ..
 > and takes action for these.
 > 
 > So we could do the same for options(..)
 > and in particular not only for
 >    options(prompt   = .)      and
 >    options(continue = .)  
 > but also
 >    options(width = .)  
 > 
 > But of course the drawback of such an approach is that it only
 > works when the functions are used explicitly at the prompt,
 > but not when they are inside "eval-region" {which actually
 > already now can be a bit confusing} or even when just inside
 > another function that is called.

Alternatively, if this was something that many people needed, what
about a new function, ess-R-parse-options, that when called by the
user (kind of like ess-resynch-completions!), will examine the current
settings in options(), and change things accordingly.

Stephen