[ESS] Gretl mode for ESS

[Vitalie Spinu]

  >> ahmadou dicko <dicko.ahmadou at gmail.com>
  >> on Sun, 30 Sep 2012 13:04:40 +0000 wrote:

  > Hi everyone,
  > I would like to know if adding a GRETL <http://gretl.sourceforge.net/> mode
  > to ESS is planned ?

I have never heard of gretl. How big is the community? And how does it
compare to R, ox and eviews?

  > There's already a basic gretl
  > mode<http://fossies.org/unix/misc/gretl-1.9.9.tar.gz:a/gretl-1.9.9/utils/emacs/gretl.el>inemacs
  > but it lacks several features availables in ESS R-mode (sending
  > command line, buffer, autocompletion, etc)

It's not that difficult to add a new interaction mode to ESS. The main
problem is not with adding a mode, but rather with maintaining it latter
on.

I can look into it, but not earlier than in a couple of months time.

  > So my question is if it's not planned, where to start ? (I would like to
  > help even if my elisp programming skillz is weak)

You can look into it yourself. Sources for inspiration are ess-julia.el,
which you probably should start with, and also ess-r-d.el for a more
complete picture.  Once the editing mode is there, the main step is to
construct ess-gretl-customize-alist with all the defaults needed for the
interaction with the subprocess, and then write 'gretl function for starting
a subprocess.


    Vitalie