[ESS] polymode, tangentially related to ESS

[chris warth]

I'm asking a polymode question here because it is tangentially related
to ESS, and there are lots of emacs experts here.   My question is
sincere and might come off as criticism, but that is not how it is
meant.   I don't know what is possible in elisp so I'm asking the
experts.

I have been using vitoshka's polymode for editing R inside markdown
documents.   The fact that it works at all is amazing, but it is not
as fluid and seamless as one would want.

Is this the best that we can hope to do in Emacs?   Using indirect
buffers is kind of genius in a twisted kind of way, but also has
inherent problems.    Can we ever hope to have a true multi-mode
editor experience in a single buffer in Emacs?

- cwarth at fhcrc.org