[ESS] Highlighting matching parentheses

[Chris Evans]

Short, Tom sent the following  at 26/04/2009 01:48:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ess-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
> [mailto:ess-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Frank E Harrell
> Jr
> Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2009 7:06 PM
> To: Marc Schwartz
> Cc: ESS-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [ESS] Highlighting matching parentheses
> 
> 
>> Thanks Marc for the improvements and the demo.  I see my main problem 
>> now: I was expecting the color coding to go across lines but it only 
>> works within a line.
>>
>> Frank
> 
> It works for me across lines, meaning the parentheses (or braces) are
> highlighted on either side are highlighted. See:
> 
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParenthesesAppearance 
> 
> - Tom


Thanks to all who have posted help to me/us with this. OK, I know what
should be happening and it's definitely not happening and I think we're
very clearly in the realm of XEmacs/Emacs differences.

With those lines in the init file and the file in site-specific lisp
directory I get an error message from XEmacs when I open a *.R file and
no longer see ESS being invoked.  The error message is:

file mode specification error: (void-function face-attr-construct)

The other thing I've learned is that the options menu structure is
different for XEmacs and Emacs, in XEmacs I think the paren highlighting
is in:
Options
  Display
     Paren Highlighting

and the options there are:
None
Blinking Paren
Steady Paren
Expression

Whichever I select I clearly get the default XEmacs paren highlighting
matching those headings but nothing new.

Clearly on my installation of XEmacs and ESS the new init lines conflict
with something else.  For now I've removed those lines from my init.el
and go on with ESS and XEmacs alone.  If anyone thinks they can suggest
debugging that might get to the bottom of this (or can just confirm that
the highlighting works for them in XEmacs) then I'm happy to testbed
debugging this but also entirely understand that others may say "change
to Emacs, not my problem".  Do hope someone running XEmacs is interested
enough to share experience and donate expertise though!

Meanwhile, I've benefitted as I now have those XEmacs paren highlighting
which is one step better than the quick match parens that ESS was
providing me.  As ever, I'm sure I should find time to take myself
through basic education in Emacs/XEmacs and probably ESS but when is
there ever time and I bodge on mostly?!

Thanks all,

Chris


-- 
Chris Evans <chris at psyctc.org> Skype: chris-psyctc
Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy, Notts. PDD network;
Trust Research Governance Lead and Clinical Director, Psychological
  Therapies Directorate in Local Services, Nottinghamshire NHS Trust;
Professor, Psychotherapy, Nottingham University
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