[ESS] ESS 5.8 released
Martin Maechler
maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
Wed Mar 3 11:06:44 CET 2010
Dear ESS users,
we are happy to announce the release of ESS 5.8 as of today.
There are new features (see below) and some bug fixes,
but today's major news item is that
we are grateful to welcome two new members to the ESS core team,
Henning Redestig,
(with current main responsibility of the vastly improved
ESS-Roxygen mode), and
Sebastian P. Luque,
(with current main responsibility for the new
ess-rutils.el).
As always, get the new ESS from ESS.r-project.org -> 'Download'
or directly at
http://ess.r-project.org/index.php?Section=download
Below, I append the (first part of the) official ANNOUNCE file.
For the ESS core team,
Martin Maechler, ETH Zurich
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1 ANNOUNCING ESS
****************
The ESS Developers proudly announce the release of ESS
5.8
Emacs Speaks Statistics (ESS) provides an intelligent, consistent
interface between the user and the software. ESS interfaces with
S-PLUS, R, SAS, BUGS and other statistical analysis packages under the
Unix, Microsoft Windows, and Apple Mac OS operating systems. ESS is a
package for the GNU Emacs and XEmacs text editors whose features ESS
uses to streamline the creation and use of statistical software. ESS
knows the syntax and grammar of statistical analysis packages and
provides consistent display and editing features based on that
knowledge. ESS assists in interactive and batch execution of
statements written in these statistical analysis languages.
ESS is freely available under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Please read the file COPYING which comes with the distribution, for
more information about the license. For more detailed information,
please read the README files that come with ESS.
1.1 Getting the Latest Version
==============================
The latest released version of ESS is always available on the web at:
ESS web page (http://ess.r-project.org) or StatLib
(http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/general/ESS/)
The latest development version of ESS is available via
`https://svn.R-project.org/ESS/', the ESS Subversion repository. If
you have a Subversion client (see `http://subversion.tigris.org/'), you
can download the sources using:
% svn checkout https://svn.r-project.org/ESS/trunk PATH
which will put the ESS files into directory PATH. Later, within
that directory, `svn update' will bring that directory up to date.
Windows-based tools such as TortoiseSVN are also available for
downloading the files. Alternatively, you can browse the sources with a
web browser at: ESS SVN site (https://svn.r-project.org/ESS/trunk).
However, please use a subversion client instead to minimize the load
when retrieving.
If you remove other versions of ESS from your emacs load-path, you
can then use the development version by adding the following to .emacs:
(load "/path/to/ess-svn/lisp/ess-site.el")
Note that https is required, and that the SSL certificate for the
Subversion server of the R project is
Certificate information:
- Hostname: svn.r-project.org
- Valid: from Jul 16 08:10:01 2004 GMT until Jul 14 08:10:01 2014 GMT
- Issuer: Department of Mathematics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, CH
- Fingerprint: c9:5d:eb:f9:f2:56:d1:04:ba:44:61:f8:64:6b:d9:33:3f:93:6e:ad
(currently, there is no "trusted certificate"). You can accept this
certificate permanently and will not be asked about it anymore.
1.2 Current Features
====================
* Languages Supported:
* S family (S 3/4, S-PLUS 3.x/4.x/5.x/6.x/7.x/8.x, and R)
* SAS
* BUGS/JAGS
* Stata
* XLispStat including Arc and ViSta
* Editing source code (S family, SAS, BUGS/JAGS, XLispStat)
* Syntactic indentation and highlighting of source code
* Partial evaluation of code
* Loading and error-checking of code
* Source code revision maintenance
* Batch execution (SAS, BUGS/JAGS)
* Use of imenu to provide links to appropriate functions
* Interacting with the process (S family, SAS, XLispStat)
* Command-line editing
* Searchable Command history
* Command-line completion of S family object names and file
names
* Quick access to object lists and search lists
* Transcript recording
* Interface to the help system
* Transcript manipulation (S family, XLispStat)
* Recording and saving transcript files
* Manipulating and editing saved transcripts
* Re-evaluating commands from transcript files
* Help File Editing (R)
* Syntactic indentation and highlighting of source code.
* Sending Examples to running ESS process.
* Previewing
1.3 Requirements
================
ESS is most likely to work with current/recent versions of the following
statistical packages: R/S-PLUS, SAS, Stata and JAGS. The one exception
is BUGS which is quite old, but should still work.
ESS supports current/recent versions of GNU Emacs and XEmacs. Most
notably, the GNU Emacs 22 series and XEmacs 21.4.14 or higher
(beta/pre-release versions are NOT SUPPORTED).
1.4 Stability
=============
All released versions (5.x, x >= 4) are meant to be release-quality
versions. While some new features are being introduced, we are
cleaning up and improving the interface. We know about some remaining
documentation inconsistencies. Patches or suggested fixes with bug
reports are much appreciated!
1.5 Mailing List
================
There is a mailing list for discussions and announcements relating to
ESS. Join the list by sending an e-mail with "subscribe ess-help" (or
"help") in the body to <ess-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch>;
contributions to the list may be mailed to
<ess-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>. Rest assured, this is a fairly
low-volume mailing list.
The purposes of the mailing list include
* helping users of ESS to get along with it.
* discussing aspects of using ESS on Emacs and XEmacs.
* suggestions for improvements.
* announcements of new releases of ESS.
* posting small patches to ESS.
1.6 Reporting Bugs
==================
Please send bug reports, suggestions etc. to
<ESS-bugs at stat.math.ethz.ch>
The easiest way to do this is within Emacs by typing
f
`M-x ess-submit-bug-report'
This also gives the maintainers valuable information about your
installation which may help us to identify or even fix the bug.
If Emacs reports an error, backtraces can help us debug the problem.
Type "M-x set-variable RET debug-on-error RET t RET". Then run the
command that causes the error and you should see a *Backtrace* buffer
containing debug information; send us that buffer.
Note that comments, suggestions, words of praise and large cash
donations are also more than welcome.
1.7 Authors
===========
* A.J. Rossini (mailto:blindglobe at gmail.com)
* Richard M. Heiberger (mailto:rmh at temple.edu)
* Kurt Hornik (mailto:Kurt.Hornik at R-project.org)
* Martin Maechler (mailto:maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch)
* Rodney A. Sparapani (mailto:rsparapa at mcw.edu)
* Stephen Eglen (mailto:stephen at gnu.org)
* Sebastian P. Luque (mailto:spluque at gmail.com)
* Henning Redestig (mailto:henning.red at googlemail.com)
1.8 License
===========
ESS is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later
version.
ESS is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
in the file COPYING in the same directory as this file for more details.
1.9 New Features
================
Changes/New Features in 5.8:
* ESS[R]: New ess-rutils.el with utilities for listing, loading,
installing, and updating packages, as well as object
manipulation (listing, viewing, and deleting). It also
provides an alternative to RSiteSearch() that uses the
browse-url function, so results can be viewed in an Emacs web
browser.
* ESS[R]: much more extensive Roxygen interface, via ess-roxy.el
from Henning Redestig. Ess-roxy supports filling of roxygen
fields, generation and updating roxygen templates,
completion of roxygen tags, basic navigation (marking and
moving between entries), foling using hs-minor-mode and
preview of the Rd file.
* Emacs lisp files have got better names (partly, for now).
Changes/New Features in 5.7:
* ESS[R]: loading a source file (`C-c C-l') now works in
Windows, similarly to other platforms; (further; it had
accidentally been broken in ESS 5.6 on all platforms)
Changes/New Features in 5.6:
* ESS[R]: help() calls have to differ from old default, with
newer versions of R; currently via .help.ESS <-
function(...) hack.
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