[ESS] ESS + Maxima

[Sparapani, Rodney]

> 
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to experiment with adding Maxima support to ESS. While
> Maxima has an Emacs mode, it is not getting a lot of development, and I
> think that ESS would offer a lot of features; then I could also use
> existing code for org-mode integration (current ob-maxima does not
> support sessions). Also, I use ESS for R and Julia, so it would make my
> life easier. I have the following questions:
> 
> 1. Is there any a priori reason why this is a bad idea?

Interesting phrasing.  These kinds of questions come up from time to
time.  Here is my view of ESS.  It is made by statisticians for
statisticians.  We support the languages that they use.  Do you hear
their cry for Maxima support?

> 2. I thought I would just look at the other languages, copy its source
> file and modify accordingly. Which one would you recommend? R seems of
> course to be the most complete, but at the same time the most complex.
>

A couple of years ago, I was playing around with iESS
and SAS.  I just wanted to see what was the minimum needed to
make it work (on UNIX/Mac OS X/Linux of course).  Take a look at
the function ess-sas-interactive.  It is only 18 lines.  However,
it does leverage some of the ESS[SAS] functionality, but it might
give you an idea of what it takes to make iESS work. 
 
> Best,
> 
> Tamas
> 
> PS.: I looked at the mailing list for prior work, but only found
> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/ess-help/2005-July/002733.html

Good find