[R] Linux editor for R+LaTeX, but not Emacs

[Marc Schwartz]

On Fri, 2007-10-05 at 22:09 +0200, Liviu Andronic wrote:
> On 10/5/07, Christian Salas <christian.salas at yale.edu> wrote:
> > I was wondering if you know of a linux editor that is able to run R and
> > compile LaTeX files from it.
> 
> Well, there is Winefish for LaTeX and Bluefish for R. The former is
> based on the latter. Not exactly one editor, but you may be interested
> in looking at them both. Maybe they have plugins or something.
> 
> Regards,
> Liviu

The only thing that Bluefish supports is syntax highlighting for R code.
It does not support the submission of the code to an R process, though
you can of course C&P to a console session running R or source() the
file. Nor does it support things like tab completion and many other
functions that make an editor like Emacs with ESS efficient for R.

I wrote the initial syntax highlighting templates for R in Bluefish four
or five years ago, when I was looking for an editor on Linux that
supported anti-aliased fonts. It was one of very few at the time that
did.

Even gedit, the default GNOME text editor, has R syntax highlighting
now. Syntax highlighting is only part of the battle in looking for a
more productive environment however.

I switched over completely to Emacs/ESS when better fonts (ie.
Bitstream) became available and I have not looked back since. I now use
Emacs 23 with ESS, Auctex, the Emacs Code Browser and other functions
(eg. gnus, Org-mode, etc.) on Fedora.

I will acknowledge bias, but I don't think that you will find a more
productive environment for R coding than the combination of Emacs and
ESS.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz