[R] Best R text editors?

[(Ted Harding)]

On 11-Sep-09 21:02:06, Patrick Connolly wrote:
> On Fri, 11-Sep-2009 at 03:46PM +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
> 
> [....]
> 
>|> Well, not really!! My point (and certainly Charles Curran's point)
>|> is that in touch-typing you know by proprioception and
>|> neuromuscular coordination where your fingers are relative to the
>|> keys on the keyboard, and what key you will press next, without
>|> looking; and you can accurately press several keys in rapid
>|> succession -- just as a pianist can play an arpeggio without
>|> looking.
> 
> [....]
> 
> I was mostly kidding when I mentioned my guess at the reasoning for
> the default settings. However, paradoxically, I mostly agree with
> Ted and avoid using the mouse for every process *except* copy/cut &
> paste.
> It's a horses for courses thing.  I use a bunch of other keyboard
> shortcuts such as looking up help files in preference to using the
> menu and mouse.  Emacs users who choose to change the default setting
> in question will be unable to use the ones I use and end up not
> becoming aware of the nifty things possible.
> 
> To that extent, I was not entirely joking.
> 
> [...]

Point taken, Patrick! Indeed, well taken. Your mouse-usage preferences
are very much the same as mine. When I'm developing R code, the left
part of the screen is occupied by an R CLI window, and the right by a
window in which I am editing a file of R code. When I think I've got
something that might be right, I mouse-copy it to the other window and
see what happens. At the end of the day the result can be made into an
R script, or left as a file of R code chunks which are known to work
for their respective tasks.

Perhaps the main difference is that you seem to use EMACS/ESS.
I use vim: all I need is the code. When it looks right I "mouse"
it across. So I'm content with a good text editor. I don't need
ESS-type interfaces with R, and I don't want to tangle with an
editor which has its own ideas about how code should be laid out.
(And don't ask about how close I once came to throwing my own
computer out of a 2nd-floor window, while trying to clean up
a student's thesis, written in Word ... talk about software which
thinks it knows better than you do .... ).

Cheers,
Ted.

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Date: 11-Sep-09                                       Time: 23:11:36
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