[R] ess in Windows (newbie Q)

[Henrik Andersson]

For you reference, there exists a separate mailing list for ESS, which 
you can find on news.gmane.org just like the R list.

Murray Eisenberg wrote:
> I'm a rank beginner with R, and I'm stumped at how to get it to work 
> with Xemacs under Windows XP. I'm afraid there are some VERY basic 
> questions I have here.  Yes, I did read 
> http://ess.r-project.org/Manual/readme.html.
> 
> Both R and Xemacs are installed and working.  The current ess files are 
> installed in a subdirectory of my Xemacs directory.  I added the R bin 
> directory to my Windows PATH environment variable.
> 
> But when I start Xemacs and then give command
> 
>   M-x-R
> 
> what I see in the mini-buffer is
> 
>   M-x-Rd-
> 
> and it's waiting for more input.
> 
> So what could be wrong?  ....
> 
> 1. Where might I find or should I put the requisite Xemacs init.el, in 
> which I'm supposed to enter a line of the form
> 
>   (load "/PATH/ess-site")
> 
> to point to the ess location?  I found no such file anywhere on my 
> system, so I created one in each of the _two_ HOME directories I have -- 
> one pointed to by the enviroment system variable HOME and the other 
> pointed to by the user environment variable HOME (which seem to be 
> different -- I don't recall whether that happened automatically when I 
> installed Singular or whether I did it manually).
> 
> 2. And what should that file actually be called?  The ess docs say it 
> should be %HOME%/.xemacs/init.el for Xemacs, but they also say to put it 
> in the .emacs (or _emacs) file or default.el or site-init.el.

I have an environment variable pointing to a folder where I put this my 
.emacs file, for Xemacs that would be in the folder .xemacs and init.el

Try Start/Run cmd.exe and then set HOME to get the location

> 
> I'm using "init.el".
> 
> 3. Did I get the form of that line correct for init.el (or whatever it 
> should actually be named)?  My file ess-site.el is in
> 
>     D:\WP\XEmacs\ess-5.2.3\lisp
> 
> so the line I actually put into default.el is:
> 
>   (load "/D:/WP/XEmacs/ess-5.2.3/lisp/ess-site")

I would try without the first slash

> 
> 4.  Anything else I should check or do to proceed?
> 
> 
See if this works, otherwise seek out the ESS mailing list!

Cheers, Henrik


---------------------------------------------
Henrik Andersson
Netherlands Institute of Ecology -
Centre for Estuarine and Marine Ecology
P.O. Box 140
4400 AC Yerseke
Phone: +31 113 577473
h.andersson at nioo.knaw.nl
http://www.nioo.knaw.nl/ppages/handersson