[ESS] ESS 5.14 released

Martin Maechler maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
Sat Jul 30 18:30:56 CEST 2011


In the name of the ESS core team,
I have released  ESS 5.14 a few minutes ago.

As always you can get it from
   http://ess.r-project.org/  (Download)

It is mainly a bug fix release, but scroll down (for "5.14") to
see the important changes / new features.
Enjoy!

Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich

Here's the beginning of the autogenerated official 
ANNOUNCE-ment :

1 ANNOUNCING ESS
****************

The ESS Developers proudly announce the release of ESS

   5.14

   Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS) provides an intelligent, consistent
interface between the user and the software.  ESS interfaces with
R/S-PLUS, SAS, BUGS/JAGS, Stata and other statistical analysis packages
under the UNIX, GNU Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and other
operating systems.  ESS is a package for the GNU Emacs and XEmacs text
editors whose features ESS uses to streamline the creation and use of
statistical software.  ESS knows the syntax and grammar of statistical
analysis packages and provides consistent display and editing features
based on that knowledge.  ESS assists in interactive and batch
execution of statements written in these statistical analysis languages.

   ESS is freely available under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Please read the file COPYING which comes with the distribution, for
more information about the license. For more detailed information,
please read the README files that come with ESS.

1.1 Getting the Latest Version
==============================

The latest released version of ESS is always available on the web at:
ESS web page (http://ess.r-project.org) or StatLib
(http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/general/ESS/)

   The latest development version of ESS is available via
`https://svn.R-project.org/ESS/', the ESS Subversion repository.  If
you have a Subversion client (see `http://subversion.tigris.org/'), you
can download the sources using:
     % svn checkout https://svn.r-project.org/ESS/trunk PATH
   which will put the ESS files into directory PATH.  Later, within
that directory, `svn update' will bring that directory up to date.
Windows-based tools such as TortoiseSVN are also available for
downloading the files.  Alternatively, you can browse the sources with a
web browser at: ESS SVN site (https://svn.r-project.org/ESS/trunk).
However, please use a subversion client instead to minimize the load
when retrieving.

   If you remove other versions of ESS from your emacs load-path, you
can then use the development version by adding the following to .emacs:

     (load "/path/to/ess-svn/lisp/ess-site.el")

   Note that https is required, and that the SSL certificate for the
Subversion server of the R project is

     Certificate information:
      - Hostname: svn.r-project.org
      - Valid: from Jul 16 08:10:01 2004 GMT until Jul 14 08:10:01 2014 GMT
      - Issuer: Department of Mathematics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, CH
      - Fingerprint: c9:5d:eb:f9:f2:56:d1:04:ba:44:61:f8:64:6b:d9:33:3f:93:6e:ad

(currently, there is no "trusted certificate").  You can accept this
certificate permanently and will not be asked about it anymore.

1.2 Current Features
====================

   * Languages Supported:
        * S family (S 3/4, S-PLUS and R)

        * SAS

        * BUGS/JAGS

        * Stata

        * XLispStat including Arc and ViSta

   * Editing source code (S family, SAS, BUGS/JAGS, Stata)
        * Syntactic indentation and highlighting of source code

        * Partial evaluation of code

        * Loading and error-checking of code

        * Source code revision maintenance

        * Batch execution (SAS, BUGS/JAGS)

        * Use of imenu to provide links to appropriate functions

   * Interacting with the process (S family, SAS, Stata)
        * Command-line editing

        * Searchable Command history

        * Command-line completion of S family object names and file
          names

        * Quick access to object lists and search lists

        * Transcript recording

        * Interface to the help system

   * Transcript manipulation (S family, Stata)
        * Recording and saving transcript files

        * Manipulating and editing saved transcripts

        * Re-evaluating commands from transcript files

   * Help File Editing (R)
        * Syntactic indentation and highlighting of source code.

        * Sending Examples to running ESS process.

        * Previewing

1.3 Requirements
================

ESS is most likely to work with current/recent versions of the following
statistical packages: R/S-PLUS, SAS, Stata, OpenBUGS and JAGS.

   ESS supports current/recent versions of GNU Emacs and XEmacs.  Most
notably, the GNU Emacs 22 series and XEmacs 21.4.14 or higher
(beta/pre-release versions are NOT SUPPORTED).

   To build the PDF documentation, you will need a version of TeX Live
or texinfo that includes texi2dvi (BEWARE: recent TeX Live, and some
texinfo RPMs, do NOT include texi2dvi).

1.4 Stability
=============

All recent released versions are meant to be release-quality versions.
While some new features are being introduced, we are cleaning up and
improving the interface.  We know that there are many remaining
opportunities for documentation improvements, but all contributors are
volunteers and time is precious. Patches or suggested fixes with bug
reports are much appreciated!

1.5 Mailing List
================

There is a mailing list for discussions and announcements relating to
ESS.  Join the list by sending an e-mail with "subscribe ess-help" (or
"help") in the body to <ess-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch>;
contributions to the list may be mailed to
<ess-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>.  Rest assured, this is a fairly
low-volume mailing list.

   The purposes of the mailing list include

   *  helping users of ESS to get along with it.

   *  discussing aspects of using ESS on Emacs and XEmacs.

   *  suggestions for improvements.

   *  announcements of new releases of ESS.

   *  posting small patches to ESS.

1.6 Reporting Bugs
==================

Please send bug reports, suggestions etc. to
<ESS-bugs at stat.math.ethz.ch>

   The easiest way to do this is within Emacs by typing

   `M-x ess-submit-bug-report'

   This also gives the maintainers valuable information about your
installation which may help us to identify or even fix the bug.

   If Emacs reports an error, backtraces can help us debug the problem.
Type "M-x set-variable RET debug-on-error RET t RET".  Then run the
command that causes the error and you should see a *Backtrace* buffer
containing debug information; send us that buffer.

   Note that comments, suggestions, words of praise and large cash
donations are also more than welcome.

1.7 Authors
===========

   * A.J. Rossini (mailto:blindglobe at gmail.com)

   * Richard M. Heiberger (mailto:rmh at temple.edu)

   * Kurt Hornik (mailto:Kurt.Hornik at R-project.org)

   * Martin Maechler (mailto:maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch)

   * Rodney A. Sparapani (mailto:rsparapa at mcw.edu)

   * Stephen Eglen (mailto:stephen at gnu.org)

   * Sebastian P. Luque (mailto:spluque at gmail.com)

   * Henning Redestig (mailto:henning.red at googlemail.com)

1.8 License
===========

ESS is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later
version.

   ESS is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License
in the file COPYING in the same directory as this file for more details.

1.9 New Features
================

     Changes/New Features in 5.14:
        * ESS[BUGS/JAGS]:  Batch BUGS is back!  For recent OpenBUGS
          versions, 3.0.8+, a batch BUGS script is once again available,
          but for Linux only.  Therefore, since it seems that BUGS and
          JAGS must co-exist (rather than a transition from BUGS to
          JAGS), .bug files are now in ESS[BUGS] mode and .jag files
          are in ESS[JAGS] mode.  ESS[BUGS] now works like ESS[JAGS]
          rather than the original mode ESS[BUGS] mode which was
          difficult to maintain.  Although, ESS[BUGS] appears to work,
          there still may be some features missing as well as bugs.

        * ESS[R]: New customizable variable `ess-swv-plug-into-AUCTeX-p'
          Commands to Sweave current file and LaTeX the result are now
          available to AUCTeX users, if this variable is set to `t'.

        * ESS[S]: `C-c C-c' (`ess-eval-function-or-paragraph-and-step')
          is now skipping over comments as the other paragraph
          functions do.  It (and similar functions) should no longer
          wrongly find `function()' beginnings inside comments or
          strings.

        * ESS[SAS]: improved by better support for GNU Emacs

     Changes/New Features in 5.13:
        * ESS[R]: On Windows, for R 2.12.0 and later, the Rterm
          executables  (in subdirectories i386 / x64) now are found as
          well as for earlier R versions.

        * ESS[S+]: on Windows, both 32- and 64-bit versions of S+
          ("S-PLUS")  are found now and made available on the menu.

        * ESS[R]: When prompting for a starting directory, the R
          version is  (always?) correct now.

        * ESS[R]: on non-Windows platforms, the `use-dialog-box'
          variable is no longer temporarily changed (to `nil' for
          R-x.y.z version  functions and to `t' for `R' itself), but
          rather the user  customization is obeyed.

        * ESS[R]: more Roxygen improvements.

        * `Rd-preview-help' now generates preview buffers with
          navigation facilities the same as regular help buffers.

        * ESS: New functions and keys C-c [up] / [down]  for evaluating
          the buffer "from beginning till here".

     Changes/New Features in 5.12:
        * ESS[SAS] Font-locking:  update of PROCs keywords (up to SAS
          9.22); error/warnings.

        * ESS[R]: Roxygen improvements: S4 classes;  also optionally
          keep spaces when filling arguments

        * ESS[Rd]: support new keywords:  section-name \subsection plus
          a dozen "new" keywords; should match R  2.12.x now.

        * `ess-display-help-on-object' (`C-c C-v')  now _caches_ the
          list of topics, thus speeding up the improvement  feature
          introduced in 5.9.

     Changes/New Features in 5.11:
        * Filename completion within buffers now adds only trailing
          characters to complete the filename, rather than expanding to
          an absolute file path.  This filename completion is bound to
          the TAB key.

        * `M-n P' in Sweave buffers now prompts for the command to run
          instead of using `pdflatex' unconditionally, offering
          completion from customizable collection
          `ess-swv-pdflatex-commands', the first of which is taken as
          default and that defaults to `texi2pdf'.

        * `M-RET' is now also bound in S language (R and S+) buffers to
          `ess-use-this-dir'. It sends `setwd(..)' to the S process to
          set the working directory to the one of the source file.

     Changes/New Features in 5.10:
        * `M-RET' in *S* buffers is now bound to `ess-dirs'.  This
          function will set Emacs's current directory to be the same as
          the *S* process.  This is useful if you use `setwd()' within
          a *S* process.



More information about the ESS-help mailing list