[ESS] ADMB support in ESS

[Arni Magnusson]

Dear ESS developers (core and contributors),

ESS provides Emacs support for a suite of statistical programming 
languages: R, SAS, Julia, etc. I'm wondering whether I can suggest adding 
support for ADMB.

AD Model Builder (ADMB) is a free statistical software environment (a 
layer on top of C++) that handles nonlinear models with a large number of 
parameters and random effects. It has been downloaded several 1000 times 
and cited several 100 times in publications:

   http://admb-project.org
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADMB
   http://code.google.com/p/admb-project/downloads/list
   http://tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10556788.2011.597854

As an ADMB core developer, I have written and maintained an `admb-mode' 
for Emacs:

   http://admb-project.org/tools/editors/emacs/admb.el/view
   http://admb-project.org/tools/editors/emacs/archive

It is a standard major mode and follows the Emacs major mode conventions, 
as outlined in the Lisp reference manual. It provides syntax highlighting, 
IDE compilation and file manipulation, outline code navigation, templates, 
and smaller tools.

---

Until now, I have distributed admb.el from the admb-project.org website, 
and provided a link on EmacsWiki.

I would be thankful if `admb-mode' can join the ESS family of statistical 
modes. Most ADMB users have ESS installed already, so they would 
appreciate less installation work. ADMB Mode fits the scope of ESS, has 
required little maintenance work, has no external dependencies, and 
compiles without warnings.

This weekend, I submitted admb.el to ESS project leader Martin Mächler, 
who acknowledged that it might be a useful addition to ESS. He recommended 
that I send this message to the ess-help mailing list, for an open 
discussion on whether/how ess-admb.el should be incorporated into ESS.

Looking forward to hearing your comments, both general and technical.

Arni
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