running ESS with S-PLUS 6.1

Richard M. Heiberger rmh at temple.edu
Wed Aug 4 07:10:00 CEST 2004


there are two problems here.

1. pathnames with embedded blanks are a very poor convention and are the cause
of one of the problems.
"C:\Documents and Settings\Satoshi\My Documents\MySwork\"

I recommend instead creating a new working directory without embedded blanks.
I use 
c:\HOME\rmh

Manually create the directories
c:\HOME
c:\HOME\Satoshi
c:\HOME\Satoshi\.Data

Open dired in c:\HOME\Satoshi

Enter
M-x S

You will be prompted to let S-Plus create the .Prefs directory.
Let it create .Prefs and then you will be in.


2. ddeclient
is part of the emacs, but not xemacs, distribution.  You can get it from emacs
and use it with xemacs.  To get it, as far as I know, you actually need to download
emacs.  I don't know it is available on its own.
If you want to use emacs on Windows, then download
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-21.3-fullbin-i386.tar.gz (18MB)

If all you want is to use the ddeclient program then you can download the smaller
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-21.3-barebin-i386.tar.gz (4MB)

The barebin program has no lisp and is therefore not executable by itself.



3. M-x S and M-x Sqpe
M-x S opens the S-Plus GUI and talks to it through ddeclient.

M-x Sqpe opens S without the GUI.  This gives the behavior with S running inside an
emacs buffer that you are used to with Unix or with R.
To get high quality graphics with Sqpe use the following lines
   library(winjava)
   java.graph()


4. S-Plus for Windows
S-Plus for Windows is designed to be a native Windows application and does not follow
the Unix conventions for standard input and standard output.  Therefore the Unix-like
communication between emacs and the S-Plus GUI is not possible.  We must use the ddeclient
as an intermediary between emacs and the S-Plus GUI.

Sqpe is the language processor and it follows the Unix conventions.  Therefore we can talk
to it inside an emacs buffer.  It doesn't use the GUI.  The new java.graph device (new with
6.1) allows the high quality graphics.



5. Documentation.  Look at the files
ess/doc/html/index.html
for full documentation including a discussion of these Windows issues.




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