[R] How useful is iESS mode for emacs?

[Anthony Rossini]

On Tue, 12 Mar 2002, Francisco J Molina wrote:

> I would like some feedback about how useful is the iESS mode to run R in
> Xemacs/emacs?

Unfair question.  So I'll respond unfairly, as well.

I can't imagine any other way to fire up R than "xemacs -f R".  But I'm severely biased, having worked on ESS for a long, long time.

Maybe a better set of questions are:
1. what does iESS provide that normal command-line R doesn't
2. what are the tradeoffs between iESS and RGui
3. if I don't know Emacs, is ESS worth trying?

What exactly are you trying to ask?  I do have to admit, though, that I almost never type in iESS unless I'm on the phone or a conference call and need a quick ball-park set of estimates/intervals/power calcs.  I usually just submit chunks of code from other files (source code, analysis code, or literate programs).
Once R is running within Emacs, I just work in the source files and perhaps save the (possibly edited) end results as an audit transcript.

best,
-tony






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