[R] Mac Text editors

[marc_schwartz]

On Sep 26, 2012, at 8:09 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote:

> 
> On Sep 26, 2012, at 6:06 PM, David Winsemius wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Sep 26, 2012, at 5:48 PM, Steven Wolf wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi everyone,
>>> 
>>> I've recently moved from using a windows machine to a Mac (some might call it an upgrade, others not…I'll let you be the judge).  Once I started using Notepad ++ on my windows machine, I really began to like it.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the free text editor options are for the Mac (Notepad ++ is windows only).  I've dabbled with Linux before and used Emacs/ESS there.  However, I seem to remember fighting pretty hard to make that work and the OSX file structure isn't that intuitive to me yet.  (For example, where is my .emacs file?)  
>> 
>> Further point. Just as with Windoze, your dot-files are hidden by Finder.app. You can see them with terminal or do as I do and unhide them (and never trash any).
>> 
>> Run this in a terminal session:
>> 
>> defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
> 
> Sorry. I do not know how to relaunch in Snow Leopard. Those direction for relaunching Finder.app worked in Leopard but when I just checked, no longer seem to.


After the above command in a terminal window, you can use:

  killall -HUP Finder

to restart Finder gently. Note that if you do this, you will also see .DS_Store files on your desktop and in folders. It's an annoyance, but just be aware of it. They are system files that store folder attributes.

Also, if Steven is interested in using Emacs/ESS, an easy way to do it is to use Vincent Goulet's DMG package, available here:

  http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/en/emacs/mac/

The .emacs file will be /Users/YourUserName/.emacs

Unless you change Finder in the above manner as David notes, it will not show up, nor will other files or folders the begin with a '.', nor will system related folders (eg. /Users/YourUserName/Library).

An advantage of Emacs/ESS is of course that it is cross-platform. I have used it on Windows (many moons ago), Linux and now OSX. As Duncan noted in his reply, so is R-Studio, if you should decide to look at that option. If you should be using any kind of version control system (eg. Subversion or Git), both Emacs/ESS and R-Studio have built in support.

Regards,

Marc Schwartz

>> 
>> 
>> # and <pt>-click-hold> on Dock-Finder-icon, choose relaunch
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> What text editors are best for the Mac, keeping in mind that I'm probably going to use them via the command line interface (e.g. X11 or Terminal).
>>> 
>>> Thanks!
>>> -Steve