[ESS] Macintosh followup advice and question

Richard M. Heiberger rmh at temple.edu
Mon Feb 9 19:08:48 CET 2015


1. I have always used M-p and M-n instead of C-<up> and C-<down>, so I
don't need those
to be redefined.  The keys that aren't on my Mac, that I sorely miss
are pageup and pagedown.I
I use fn-up and fn-down (i don't remember if they come with the system
or I had to do something),
although C-v and M-v also do that in emacs.

What I do need to do is set the function keys (F1-F12) to be standard
function keys.

3. I can't reproduce what your student did.  When I save a *R* buffer with C-x w
the file is saved.  it is immediately changed when I type anything.  I
then have two files.
the saved file abcd.Rout and the current #abcd.Rout#

Rich

On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 12:34 PM, Paul Johnson <pauljohn32 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've urged the students to try Emacs on Mac and Dr Goulet's installer works
> very well.
>
>
> In the process, I've learned a couple of things. I wonder if these messages
> should be conveyed to users more bluntly
>
> 1. It is VITAL to go into the Mac's Mission Control and change the shortcut
> keys.  THey are currently using Control-up arrow and Control-down arrow as
> window manager things, and if you don't free up those shortcuts, your like
> in the R console is empty, without any joy whatsoever.
>
> This seems like such a vital piece of advice that it should be plainly
> stated somewhere on the "R for mac users".  Advice sheets I find generally
> assume a user likes Macs and Emacs and neither is true for most of these
> users, they just want to know what to do.
>
> 2. Also we need to say "XQuartz" is a mandatory install, there's no point
> having R without it.
>
>
> Now, my question.
>
> 3. In Emacs Mac, How do you save the output from *R* as a text file?  I
> told the users to just save the *R* window with File->save as and give the
> file the same name as the R file and a suffix "Rout".  User came in showing
> that when he saves the transcript, Emacs only saves a backup file, it never
> gets promoted to a real file. I mean, it is always marked #.  WHen emacs
> closes down, it says do you want to save the files, but in the end the
> result is always #backup.Rout#
>
> I realize now the workflow I use is proabably wrong.  I should have told
> him to close the R session, then try to save the *R* windows with a file
> name whatever.Rout. Is that what you would do?
>
> --
> Paul E. Johnson
> Professor, Political Science      Assoc. Director
> 1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504      Center for Research Methods
> University of Kansas                 University of Kansas
> http://pj.freefaculty.org               http://quant.ku.edu
>
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>
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