[ESS] running Stata SE 8.2 using ESS on Mac OSX

[Stephen Eglen]

Tak Wing Chan writes:
 > Hello
 > 
 > I just changed platform from Linux to Mac OSX and upgraded from Stata 7 
 > to Stata 8 as well.
 > 
 > I have been running Stata 7 from within Emacs using ESS, and would like 
 > to do the same with Stata 8. I have X11 (running full screen mode), 
 > Emacs, ESS, etc set up on my Mac, and "M-x R" would run R nicely on my 
 > Mac. But I cannot do the equivalent for Stata.
 > 
 > Since Stata 8 now lives in the /Applications Folder of Mac, I have 
 > built a symbolic link from /usr/bin to Stata as follows:
 > 
 > ln -s /Applications/Stata/StataSE.app/Contents/MacOS/StataSE stata
 > 
 > This doesn't work. I then try adding 
 > /Applications/Stata/StataSE.app/Contents/MacOS/StataSE to my search 
 > path. And when I type "M-x stata", I get "Process Stata is not 
 > running".
 > 
 > Has anyone got any experience with this problem? I would be most 
 > grateful for any suggestion?

hi Wing,
I'm not familiar with running stata - but a couple of suggestions to
follow:

we have the following variable:

(defcustom inferior-STA-program-name "env"
  "*Program name for invoking an inferior ESS with stata().
This is NOT Stata, because we need to call stata with TERM=emacs in
order for it to work right.  And Emacs is too smart for it."
  :group 'ess-Stata
  :type 'string)

what is this variable set to you for you?  (I'm not sure what "env" is
here.)

Also, if within Emacs you do "M-x shell" you should get a regular
terminal within Emacs.  At this terminal, try "stata" to see if stata
is found and starts for you.  If it doesn't work in the shell, it may
be that Emacs can't find your stata.

Hopefully someone else on the list can chip in.  If you find a
solution, please let us know and tell us if we need to update the
manual accordingly.

Thanks, 

Stephen