[ESS] proposal re: underscore

gerald.jean at dgag.ca gerald.jean at dgag.ca
Thu Apr 5 14:47:40 CEST 2012


I have used both, Splus and R, for years through ESS-Emacs, thanks a
million times to the developpers.  I love the current behaviour of
underscore and would be disappointed to see the default change.  Of course,
I would have no problem to optionnaly assigning "<-" to a different key!!!

Cheers!!!

Gérald Jean
Conseiller senior en statistiques,
VP Actuariat et Solutions d'assurances,
Desjardins Groupe d'Assurances Générales
télephone            : (418) 835-4900 poste (7639)
télecopieur          : (418) 835-6657
courrier électronique: gerald.jean at dgag.ca

"We believe in God, others must bring Data."

W. Edwards Deming



                                                                           
             Joshua Wiley                                                  
             <jwiley.psych at gma                                             
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                                                                     Objet 
                                       Re: [ESS] proposal re: underscore   
             2012/04/04 20:05                                              
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




I certainly would not want the option to go away.  I think that " <- "
is much nicer to read and useful for assignment and " = " for matching
function arguments.  I agree with Richard that having another key
option to assign is fine.

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 2:42 PM, Richard M. Heiberger <rmh at temple.edu>
wrote:
> A new option to assign " <- " to some other key is fine.
>
> The present behavior should not be changed.
> The default in S and R modes should be ess-smart-underscore and the
> ess-toggle-underscore must continue to work for people whose .emacs
> currently
> want it off.
>
> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 4:28 PM, Vitalie Spinu <spinuvit at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I tend to agree with Jack, it's inconsistent across the modes. And
>> unless you are using ESS only for R, it's a problem. This is why I am
>> not using it myself. In any case I think smart-underscore should be
>> smart-assignment instead, with an ability to be assigned it to any
>> key. Once assigner to a key "x", pressing "x" twice should do whatever
>> action was hijacked. I would probably like to assign it to "<". Jack's
>> C-= idea is not bad ad all as that key is free, easy to type, and has
>> intuitive meaning.
>>
>> What others think? May be we should put it to a vote.
>>
>> Vitalie.
>>
>> >>>> Rainer M Krug <r.m.krug at gmail.com>
>>  >>>> on Wed, 4 Apr 2012 20:12:00 +0200 wrote:
>>
>>  > Hi
>>
>>  > On 04/04/12 19:52, Jack Tanner wrote:
>>  >> Premise: the smart-underscore behavior in ESS is problematic because
>>
>>  > I would not agree here.
>>
>>  >>
>>  >> 1) it's inconsistent across modes, as described in my post a couple
of
>> weeks ago and repeated
>>  >> below for convenience
>>
>>  > OK - I can not comment to bugs-mode as I have never used bugs, but it
>> is consistent in R modes.
>>
>>  >>
>>  >> 2) it's confusing to novices, as evidenced by the fact that it's a
FAQ
>>
>>  > Well - there are many "problematic" things to remember for a novice -
>> underscore as a very
>>  > convenient one is probably a minor issue.
>>
>>  >>
>>  >> 3) it will be even more confusing to novices over time, because
>> underscore as assignment
>>  >> operator was phased out in R a long time ago
>>
>>  > Sorry - I never heard about "underscore as assignment operator" in R.
>> It must have been a long
>>  > time ago.
>>
>>  >>
>>  >> 4) it requires two keystrokes of underscore to get an actual
underscore
>>
>>  > True - but only one to get "<-" ...
>>
>>  >>
>>  >> Proposal: ESS should emulate another R editor on this point, namely
>> StatET. The
>>
>>  > Well - ESS runs in emacs, and emacs has different shortcuts then the
>> other editors - but I see you
>>  > point here.
>>
>>  >> behavior is as follows:
>>  >>
>>  >> 1) typing = gets you =
>>  >>
>>  >> 2) typing _ gets you _
>>  >>
>>  >> 3) typing <- gets you <-
>>  >>
>>  >> 4) (this is the magic one) typing Ctrl+= gets you <-
>>  >>
>>  >> The main argument 'pro' is that 1-3 are not at all confusing to
>> novices, and 4 is a
>>  >> discoverable feature, i.e., a reward for advanced users.
Additionally,
>> this would be consistent
>>  >> across S, R, BUGS, and JAGS, and would not violate their syntax,
>> unlike the current behavior
>>  >> (explained in my older note, below).
>>  >>
>>  >> The current smart-underscore could be retained as-is for those who
>> want it but turned off by
>>  >> default in future versions.
>>
>>  > As long as the default behaviour stays as it is, it would be OK.
>>
>>  > I actually see the "_ as <-" as a huge plus of ESS.
>>
>>  > Cheers,
>>
>>  > Rainer
>>
>>  >>
>>  >> -- my older email, repeated for reference --
>>  >>
>>  >> 1. In ESS[BUGS] mode, underscore is bound to ess-bugs-hot-arrow,
which
>> is definitely wrong,
>>  >> because it doesn't let me create variables like foo_bar.
>>  >>
>>  >> 2. I'd like it if I could use smart-underscore as in ESS[S] mode,
but
>> if I do
>>  >>
>>  >> (define-key ess-bugs-mode-map (kbd "_") 'ess-smart-underscore)
>>  >>
>>  >> then there's no smart-underscore behavior, just a plain underscore.
>>  >>
>>  >> ______________________________________________
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>>
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--
Joshua Wiley
Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology
Programmer Analyst II, Statistical Consulting Group
University of California, Los Angeles
https://joshuawiley.com/

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