[ESS] Breaking an S process

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "Tiago" == Tiago R Magalhaes <tiago17 at socrates.berkeley.edu>
>>>>>     on Tue, 28 Dec 2004 19:25:43 +0000 writes:

    Tiago> Hi
    Tiago> I am a recent user of Xemacs and ESS. I am having a problem and I was 
    Tiago> wondering if someone can help. I'm using xemacs 21.4.15 and Ess 5.2.3 
    Tiago> in a Mac OS 10.3.7 running inside an X11 server.

    Tiago> My basic question is: how can I stop an R process. I know of C-g, C-c 
    Tiago> C-c but that doesn't seem to work in at least one occasion where I 
    Tiago> have been needing it a lot:

    Tiago> if I create an x=data.frame(1:15000) and I type x, I get all 15000 
    Tiago> values (obviously...)
    Tiago> I have tried to stop it by C-c C-c but from the first C-c I get a 
    Tiago> message saying:
    Tiago> Fontifying *R* (regexps) with a bar that has a button stop.

well, two things for now:
1) people have said here that turning off fontlocking helps with
   this problem, but that doesn't seem like a real option to me.
2) I'm almost always using GNU emacs, and have better
   experiences with C-g C-c C-c than you.
   also, it had seemed to me that using the 
   [Signals] Emacs menu and there the first option [Break]
   (which in principle is equivalent to C-c C-c) seems to work
   even a bit more quickly.

but really, we are waiting for experienced  Xemacs users' and
their experience.

    Tiago> This freezes the iESS that I can unfreeze by C-g. But lower 
    Tiago> "fontifying" remains there.

    Tiago> Thanks for any help

Also note that people have thought about and recommended changes
to R's print() {and show()} commands such that they would never
print more than a certain {configurable} amount.  The whole
problem concerns all "UI"s (user interfaces) to R (or S-plus),
not just ESS.  The Windows 'gui' uses buffering and possibly other ways
that can help but I don't know.

But AFAIK there hasn't been yet any general satisfying idea
(that has been easy enough to implement).

Martin