[ESS] ESS usage poll

Erik Iverson eriki at ccbr.umn.edu
Tue Jun 8 23:50:48 CEST 2010


Hello,

You might consider a free web survey that automatically tabulates 
results?  More below ...

 > 1. Which statistical package(s) do you use with ESS?
 > (specify the version number)
 >
 > _most recent_ R
 > _____________ S-plus
 > _____9.2_____ SAS
 > _____________ Stata
 > _____________ JAGS
 > _____________ BUGS
 > _____________ Other, specify ________________
 >
 >
 > 2. Which version(s) of emacs do you use?
 > (specify the version number)
 >
 > _most recent_ GNU Emacs
 > _____________ Aquamacs
 > _____________ XEmacs
 > _____________ SXEmacs
 > _____________ Other, specify ________________
 >
 >
 > 3. Which operating system(s) do you use?
 > (specify the version number and/or variant)
 >
 > _Ubuntu, latest_ Linux
 > _____________    Windows
 > _____________    Mac OS X
 > _____________    Solaris/OpenSolaris
 > _____________    AIX
 > _____________    HP-UX
 > _____________    FreeBSD
 > _____________    Other, specify ________________
 >
 >
 > 4. If you could only request one feature, what would it be?

I think ESS is very feature complete at this point.  The only thing I've 
looked at that seems interesting is some sort of 'intellisense' feature 
that uses R's built-in completion mechanism to temporarily display 
available completions using something like company-mode, autocomplete, 
or completion-ui.  I had at one point something that almost worked, but 
I believe the library it was built in, company-mode, has now changed 
significantly.

Another separate point is that the manual could be slightly updated to 
keep up with current features.  For example, the main evaluation command 
in R buffers, C-c C-c, is not documented.  A great feature for showing R 
function arguments when the '(' key is pressed only shows up in the 
Changelog, and is claimed to be on be default 
(ess-r-args-electric-paren), when that no longer seems to be the case. 
Simple features like this can draw users to ESS who might not know why 
it is useful to them otherwise.

I have mentioned these things before and been told that updates to the 
manual would be welcome if I wanted to do them, and I honestly would 
like to do them, I am just re-iterating here again since it seems to fit 
with the question.

Best,
Erik



More information about the ESS-help mailing list