[R] Best R text editors?

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "PaCo" == p connolly <p_connolly at slingshot.co.nz>
>>>>>     on Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:19:31 +1200 writes:

    PaCo> On Mon, 31-Aug-2009 at 08:25PM +1000, Jim Lemon wrote:
    PaCo> [...]

    PaCo> |> Hi Liviu,
    PaCo> |> I was going to steer clear of this one, as my favorite editor (NEdit)
    PaCo> |> has become mildly incompatible with my favorite window manager (KDE) on
    PaCo> |> my favorite operating system (Linux) and I have sadly taken to using
    PaCo> |> KWrite, hoping that things will get better. Still, one must not get
    PaCo> |> stuck in a rut, so I decided to download Emacs and try it again. Twenty
    PaCo> |> four megabytes poorer, I find that things are much the same. Emacs still
    PaCo> |> has that annoying trait of being determinedly incompatible with anything
    PaCo> |> else, even if the conventions are quite sensible. Thus most of my
    PaCo> |> keyboard shortcuts that I use all the time just don't work. Do I want to
    PaCo> |> learn Emacs shortcuts so that I will hit the wrong key shortcuts on all
    PaCo> |> my other applications?

    PaCo> I sympathize.  I prefer the keyboard shortcuts that WordStar used.
    PaCo> The "diamond" was so intuitive.  However, even though I could have
    PaCo> configured Emacs to use the WordStar diamond, I noticed that strange
    PaCo> and all as it is, the Emacs shortcut system is vastly more extensive and
    PaCo> adaptable.  Now I rarely think of WordStar.

    PaCo> Because they're so utterly different from what ordinary software uses,
    PaCo> I don't find much confusion on the occasions where I use said ordinary
    PaCo> software.  One tends not to get German vocabulary confused with Chinese vocab.

:-)

    PaCo> I think it will be a very long time before Emacs follows
    PaCo> the mob, and if it does, many of us will want an option to use the
    PaCo> strange old system.

well, actually, since Emacs 23, in its 'Options' Menu there's
now a check-box entry 

    " C-x/C-c/C-v Cut and Paste (CUA) "

((which still is "off" by default ;-))
but the person used to German instead of Chinese can just click
that and also click " Save Options "  on the same menu 
and  have the default changed.....

... not that I would do that ever ...

Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich


    PaCo> --
    PaCo> Patrick Connolly
    PaCo> Plant & Food Research
    PaCo> Mt Albert
    PaCo> Auckland
    PaCo> New Zealand