[ESS] ESS usage poll

[Keith Ponting]

> We are trying to decide how best to improve ESS in the future.  So,
> here's your chance to voice your opinions.
> Could you please reply to the following poll questions?
> 
> Thanks,
> 

First, a big vote of thanks to the ESS maintainers and developers.
And a second one to Vincent Goulet for his bundled distribution.

> Rodney
> 
> 
> 1. Which statistical package(s) do you use with ESS?
> (specify the version number)
> 
> 2.10.1, soon to be 2.11.1 ____________ R
> _____________ S-plus
> _____________ SAS
> _____________ Stata
> _____________ JAGS
> _____________ BUGS
> _____________ Other, specify ________________
> 
> 
> 2. Which version(s) of emacs do you use?
> (specify the version number)
> 
> 23.1.1_______ GNU Emacs
> _____________ Aquamacs
> _____________ XEmacs
> _____________ SXEmacs
> _____________ Other, specify ________________
> 
> 
> 3. Which operating system(s) do you use?
> (specify the version number and/or variant)
> 
> openSUSE 11.1 (x86_64) _____________ Linux
> Vista Business SP2 _____________ Windows
> _____________ Mac OS X
> _____________ Solaris/OpenSolaris
> _____________ AIX
> _____________ HP-UX
> _____________ FreeBSD
> _____________ Other, specify ________________
> 
> 
> 4. If you could only request one feature, what would it be?

(Vaguely related to other comments about font locking, which I second,
but probably an issue for two-mode-mode rather than for ESS) I use
Sweave a lot with emacs two-mode-mode. When in an ess block (for which I
use \begin{Scode}...\end{Scode}) the font locking is often corrupted by
characters in the rest of the file. It appears that the two modes are
not completely isolated, so that an unbalanced $ in an ESS block will
cause the LaTeX sections to be treated as in maths mode, conversely
unbalanced ' in the LaTeX sections causes the ESS sections to be treated
as strings.

There is a work-around - adding the balancing symbol as a comment in the
appropriate language, but it does take a bit of finding sometimes.


Keith Ponting
Aurix Ltd, Malvern WR14 3SZ  UK