[ESS] RFC: and .Rhistory -- new default == *no* .Rhistory ??

[Rmh]

I agree with Martin's summary and conclusion: keep the default and strongly recommend tha change options.

Rich

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 3, 2011, at 5:58, Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:

> Thank you very much!
> all, who sent in your votes, some offline (for saving list
> bandwidth), almost always providing reasons for your opinion.
> 
> My summary (hopefully mostly unbiased):
> 
> o Most voted *pro* changing the default, with main arguments
>    - we should emphasize working with *.R script files
>    - I'd prefer no .Rhistory - cluttering my file system
>    - emacs users nowadays should be smart to activate it if  they want
> 
> o Those voting *pro* keeping the default argued
>    - beginners may be helped much by its presence
>    - the smart "leet" (~= "elite" - I had to look that up; it's an
>                        interesting Wikipedia reading)
>      users have ~/.emacs customizations anyway and can just add one more
>    - "the principle of least surprise"
>      (changing year long defaults is unpleasant if not frustrating for many)
> 
> There's one thing most correspondents seem to not have been
> aware (even though I tried to get it accross as well):
> My changes (to the svn development version) two days ago have
> finally activated the  ess-history-directory  (customizable) variable
> and if you set that --  very natural to me seems
>        (setq ess-history-directory "~/.R/")
> then there would be one and only one .Rhistory file, namely ~/.R/.Rhistory
> which gives no cluttering and no warnings about missing
> .Rhistory files, but of course looses project, i.e. directory,
> specific history.
> 
> After all these considerations, and notably with the wise
> recommendation from Doug Bates, one of the very earliest authors
> of ESS (then under the name of "S-mode"), I am now proposing to
> keep the default behavior -- for the sake of the unsuspecting
> and the beginners -- but also plan to add a prominent
> recommendation/hint that you easily can turn it off completely by
>        (setq ess-history nil)
> or turn off the cluttering by 
>        (setq ess-history-directory "~/.R/")
>    ;; requires *write* permission to the directory..
> 
> once again with the idea that many of the experienced ESS users
> will do one or the other.
> 
> I know that this may seem as disregarding majority vote, but
> then it was not only a vote (*) rather more a RFC, and I've
> ended up counting those comments more than votes.  Also, this is
> not a decision (as that will rather be made by the full ESS core
> team) but only a strong suggestion...
> 
> Martin
> 
> ---
> (*) the vote can not really be "representative" the way we had to
>   do it on ESS-help, and keeping it up a very limited time, etc etc
> 
> 
>> On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Douglas Bates <bates at stat.wisc.edu>
>> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 7:25 AM, Guy Freeman <gfreeman at hku.hk> wrote:
>>>> I agree with Marianne, including being grateful for your hard work!
>>>> 
>>>> This shouldn't be treated as an election, but as an opportunity to
>>>> explore the consequences for non-"leet" users.
>>>> 
>>>> Keep default -> harmless if messy .Rhistory file created, which can
>>>> be turned off for those who are very obsessive about these things ;)
>>>> Change default -> great for those that expect it, disaster for those
>>>> that didn't
>>> 
>>> I agree that the new capability is very desirable but that there is
>>> probably no need to change the default.  Anyone reading this email
>>> list probably has ess configuration variables set in their ~/.emacs
>>> file anyway so this is just one more to set if you prefer not to have
>>> .Rhistory files created.
>>> 
>>>> On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 18:35, Marianne Promberger
>>>> <marianne.promberger at kcl.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>>> Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> 01-Sep-11 16:24:
>>>>>> With this e-mail, we are polling you, the active ESS users.  Or in
>>>>>> other words, we ask you to "vote" on one aspect of this issue, for
>>>>>> which I need to give a bit more context :
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>        nil --  do not attempt to read/write a history file        
>>>>>>  t --  use the default naming scheme for loading the history  
>>>>>>  "fname" -- use this value as the filename.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>   Note that from above,  't'  corresponds to the current default  
>>>>>> in ESS (which is 'nil' there !).
>>>>> 
>>>>> I would vote for a default of "t"
>>>>> 
>>>>> We are talking about a default. I think it is worse if you expect R
>>>>> to write a .Rhistory and it doesn't than if you get unnecessary
>>>>> clutter (because you don't know about the new option to turn off the
>>>>> Rhistory).
>>>>> 
>>>>> Many ESS users probably don't read this list, or the change notes.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Personally, I would not want to miss .Rhistory files in project
>>>>> folders.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I have a script file for each project. But that is already more
>>>>> cluttered than I'd like it to be (eg, with analyses that I will not
>>>>> ultimately report).
>>>>> 
>>>>> I often work with trial-and-error to achieve a task. I do save the
>>>>> end result to the script file. Later I may have a similar but not
>>>>> identical task, and I vaguely remember that one of the
>>>>> trial-and-error-steps would be helpful now. Going through the
>>>>> .Rhistory is very helpful in that case.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Whichever way you decidee, many thanks for putting together such a
>>>>> tremendously useful tool!
>>>>> 
>>>>> Marianne
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> Marianne Promberger http://promberger.info
>>>>> http://participate-in-research.org.uk GnuPG/PGP public key ID
>>>>> 80AD9916
>>>>> 
>>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Dr. Guy Freeman, Post-Doctoral Fellow
>>>> School of Public Health
>>>> Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine
>>>> The University of Hong Kong
>>>> Tel: +852 - 39062034
>>>> Mob: +852 - 68790289
>>>> Fax: +852 - 35201945
>>>> Add: Unit 624-627, Level 6, Core F, Cyberport 3, 100 Cyberport Road, Hong Kong
>>>> Web: http://sph.hku.hk/faculty_and_staff_detail.php?id=171
>>>> 
> 
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