[ESS] Emacs for former XEmacs users

[Rodney Sparapani]

Rodney Sparapani wrote:
> However, for me, this does nothing.  Perhaps this is a good point
> to end this off topic discussion.  ESS 5.14 is out now and it
> should resolve a few Emacs glitches (and be more consistent with
> the XEmacs behavior as well).
> 
> Rodney
> 

I know I ended this off-topic thread.  However, I have developed 
something related that is practically on-topic.  Earlier, I mentioned 
that tabbar is a nice addition for former XEmacs users.  I have since
found that it is also available in some Emacs distros like Aquamacs.

However, the default behavior of tabbar is probably not what you want.
For example, an *R* buffer will appear in a different tab group from *.R 
files (and *R:2* is in yet another group, doh!).  And, similarly, ESS 
Help will appear in different tab groups, i.e. ?apply.  None of this is 
configurable in tabbar as far as I can tell.  However, you can use the 
source (Luke)!  I managed to get what I want by hacking tabbar.el 
(certainly, this is as drastic as hacking ESS to get what you want, but 
I see no alternative).  Specifically, I changed the function 
tabbar-buffer-groups as follows (near the bottom of tabbar.el):

(defun tabbar-buffer-groups ()
   "Return the list of group names the current buffer belongs to.
Return a list of one element based on major mode."
   (list
    (cond
     ((member (buffer-name)
              '("*R*" "*R:2*" "*R:3*" "*R:4*" "*R:5*" "*R:6*" "*R:7*" 
"*R:8*" "*R:9*"))
      "ESS[S]"
      )
     ((memq major-mode
            '(ess-help-mode))
      "ESS[S]"
      )
    ((or (get-buffer-process (current-buffer))
          ;; Check if the major mode derives from `comint-mode' or
          ;; `compilation-mode'.
          (tabbar-buffer-mode-derived-p
           major-mode '(comint-mode compilation-mode)))
      "Process"
      )
     ((memq major-mode
            '(Man-mode))
      "Process"
      )
     ((member (buffer-name)
              '("*scratch*"))
      "Emacs-Lisp"
      )

     ((member (buffer-name)
              '("*ESS*" "*Messages*" "*Warnings*"))
      "Bury"
      )
     ((eq major-mode 'dired-mode)
      "Dired"
      )
     ((member (buffer-name)
              '("*GNU Emacs*"))
      "Emacs-Lisp"
      )
     ((memq major-mode
            '(help-mode apropos-mode Info-mode))
      "Emacs-Lisp"
      )
     ((memq major-mode
            '(rmail-mode
              rmail-edit-mode vm-summary-mode vm-mode mail-mode
              mh-letter-mode mh-show-mode mh-folder-mode
              gnus-summary-mode message-mode gnus-group-mode
              gnus-article-mode score-mode gnus-browse-killed-mode))
      "Mail"
      )
     (t
      ;; Return `mode-name' if not blank, `major-mode' otherwise.
      (if (and (stringp mode-name)
               ;; Take care of preserving the match-data because this
               ;; function is called when updating the header line.
               (save-match-data (string-match "[^ ]" mode-name)))
          mode-name
        (symbol-name major-mode))
      ))))

Maybe this is of use to somebody.

Rodney