[ESS] German umlaute in ESS, Emacs & R

[tyler]

Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> writes:

>>>>>> "es" == enno sandkasten <enno_sandkasten at arcor.de>
>>>>>>     on Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:17:38 +0200 (CEST) writes:
>
>     es> Hi list, I use GNU Emacs 22.2.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600) of
>     es> 2008-03-26 on Windows XP and ESS Version 5.3.7, both
>     es> downloaded from
>     es> http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/en/ressources/emacs/, and R
>     es> version 2.7.1 for Windows.
>
>     es> My problem is that Emacs cannot handle german umlaute as R
>     es> variable names:
>
>     >> ä <- 3
>     es> Error: unexpected input in "\201"
>
>     es> This does not occur in RGui.exe. I think this is more an emacs
>     es> than ess problem, but maybe there are any suggestions.
>
> Yes, it seems an Emacs rather than ESS problem, also visible on Linux.
> I can reproduce the problem also by starting R from the *shell* (M-x
> shell) buffer, hence it's not related to ESS, but most probably
> related to how emacs uses the 'comint-*' functions to communicate with
> the "inferior" process.

For what it's worth, it works fine for me in Emacs 23.0.60.1, running on
Debian Lenny, R version 2.7.1, ESS 5.3.8, and also with R running in an
Emacs shell buffer:

> ä <- 3
> ä
[1] 3

So upgrading to Emacs23, which boasts improved unicode support, may fix
the problem. This is not yet a stable release, so you may run into other
issues if you do (I haven't yet though).

Cheers,

Tyler

-- 
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