[R-SIG-Mac] built-in editor underlining

[Simon Urbanek]

JiHO,

thanks for your comments.

On Sep 18, 2006, at 9:28 AM, jiho wrote:

> everything in R (R files but console output also) being only text, I
> think it should be treated as such: i.e. no text attributes changes
> _by the user_ should be allowed.

Ok, fair enough.


> I remarked this also. The solution many editors adopt is to colour  
> until the end of the line only. For example in smultron, there is  
> a  check box in the preferences which says:
> "Only colour till the end of the line if it can't find closing tag"
>

In R multi-line strings are rather rare, so it may be a way to go...

> emulate these functions in BBEdit? If yes how? I would really like  
> to be able to use an external editor also, just for consistency  
> between my different projects. Smultron is my editor of choice and  
> it has R syntax highlighting but I don't know how to emulate these  
> functions in it.
>

AFAIR you can use AppleScript to do it from Smultron (or any edtior)  
- you may want to look in the FAQ and/or dig in the archives for it...


> Once again, I am really happy with R.app as it is now. These are some
> features which could make me (and hopefully other people) even  
> happier:
> - multi-document editor window (with tabs or a drawer with  
> documents names or...)

We've been toying with this, but it's non-trivial to implement. Maybe  
I shoudl revive that code ...


> - quicker console output. I write this here because it may be  
> related to syntax highlighting. when using R from the command line  
> I never see any delay between console output (from commands such as  
> cat or print) and the execution of R code while delay can be  
> introduced when using R.app

R.app uses caching, so if R doesn't flush the console explicitly, it  
can be delayed. This makes the console much faster, because R writes  
things in very small chunks. However, you can explicitly tell the  
console to flush immediately with flush.console().


> - all-in-one-window interface (this has a name in GUI design which  
> I cannot remember). if the editor is made multi-document capable,  
> having one window with console on the left and editor + help on the  
> right would be awesome IMHO.

Ok, but then we're getting dangerously close to Eclipse ;).


> this would avoid having to dig through editor windows to find the  
> help file you're looking for.
>

.. when you open help from an editor window, it will be attached to  
that window, so that should work already.


> and last addition (but not really related to all this): if text  
> inside help windows could be searchable that would greatly help too.
>

That's definitely a good idea.

Thanks,
Simon