[ESS] Emacs/ESS is missing that feature

[Andreas Leha]

Vitalie Spinu <spinuvit at gmail.com> writes:

>  >> Andreas Leha <andreas.leha at med.uni-goettingen.de>
>  >> on Fri, 12 Jul 2013 21:45:19 +0200 wrote:
>
>  > Rodney Sparapani <rsparapa at mcw.edu> writes:
>  >>> 2. decent support to display large tables/data.frames (or .csv files)
>  >> 
>  >> Did you try C-c C-d C-e?
>  >> 
>  >> C-c C-d C-e runs the command ess-describe-object-at-point, which is an
>  >> interactive compiled Lisp function in `ess-help.el'.
>  >> 
>  >> It is bound to C-c C-d e, C-c C-d C-e.
>  >> 
>  >> (ess-describe-object-at-point)
>
>  > [...]
>
>  > Yes, I am aware of that function and I do indeed use that extensively.
>
>  > For me, these summaries, head, etc suffice and are more than handy.
>
>  > But still, while discussing my analyses with the client, the client is
>  > usually not familiar with the different summaries and likes to see the
>  > data.  In these situations, I (far too) often write data to a csv which
>  > I than open in a spreadsheet program.
>
>  > I would love to see a better possibility to present a larger data set
>  > from within emacs.  Ideally without leaving ess, or via the csv route.
>
> This is a dream project for me. Proper data handling and manipulation
> with slicing/reshaping/viewporting + plot and generation of summaries. I
> never started it as it would require a considerably more advanced
> sub-process communication protocol than what we have now in
> ESS. Something along swank or, better, nrepl. This is a priority
> project. 

That project sounds exciting.  I remember some thread on a slime like
interface a few months back [fn:1].  But admittedly all of that is way
over my head...

>
> Another project, for which I already have a name, ess-analyze, is an
> menu/keyboard/helm/yas driven statistical analysis toolboxes,
> incorporating, for begging, the functionality available in R-commander
> and Deducer, but without annoying menus and click-button interfaces.
>

Again really exciting!

> 
> As to image in emacs, it should be indeed easy, now that emacs builds
> with image-magic it is really worth a serious try.
> 

Thanks for all this outlook on cool things that might come to ESS
sooner or later!

Regards,
Andreas



Footnotes:

[fn:1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.ess.general/5605/focus=5606