[ESS] command history and source-is-real [was: Update to modified GNU Emacs]

[Dan Davison]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 07:53:06PM -0400, Vincent Goulet wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> As a result of this recent thread
> 
> 	https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/ess-help/2007-August/004279.html
> 
> I made a couple of small additions to my modified GNU Emacs  
> distribution, namely the the following lines to the site  
> configuration (site-start.el) file:
> 
> =====
> ;; Following the "source if real" philosophy put forward by ESS, one
> ;; should not need the command history and should not save the
> ;; workspace at the end of an R session. Hence, both options are
> ;; disabled here.
> (setq-default inferior-R-args "--no-restore-history --no-save ")

Unless I've misunderstood, this seems to be suggesting that the command history has no role within the "source is real" approach. I'm all for source-is-real, but I think this is taking things too far. Personally I am in the habit of only keeping function definitions in my .R files. My previous commands, that will recreate useful objects, are stored in my command history. Commands pertaining to different projects reside in .Rhistory files in the working directory associated with that project.

As a consequence I use the command history (and especially the partial matching via comint-previous-matching-input-from-input) intensively. I do admit that this email has given me cause to think again about whether I should do more typing of my function calls into a .R buffer and using the ess-eval* stuff (seeing as that's what I always see others doing...(well, copy and paste at least)). But I don't think the command history should be completely taboo for source-is-real advocates. Apart from anything else the partial matching functionality is really convenient, for going back through a bunch of similar commands.

Dan






> 
> ;; Set code indentation following the standard in R sources.
> (setq-default c-default-style "bsd")
> (setq-default c-basic-offset 4)
> (add-hook 'ess-mode-hook
> 	  '(lambda()
> 	     (ess-set-style 'C++ 'quiet)))
> =====
> 
> Hence, no need to download again the whole distribution if you did it  
> in the last couple of days.
> 
> I also started to number my releases and added a NEWS file, to help  
> keeo track of changes. The distribution is always at
> 
> 	http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/emacs/
> 
> 
>    Vincent Goulet, Associate Professor
>    École d'actuariat
>    Université Laval, Québec
>    Vincent.Goulet at act.ulaval.ca   http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca
> 
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