[R] kate editor for R

[Ramon Diaz-Uriarte]

On Friday 19 January 2007 14:12, Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:
> Ramon Diaz-Uriarte wrote:
> > On Friday 19 January 2007 03:30, Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:
> >> Like kile for LaTeX, Linux/KDE's kate editor is an excellent editor for
> >> R, with easy code submission to a running R process.  Syntax
> >> highlighting is good.  I have  not been able to figure out two things:
> >>
> >> - how to automatically reformat a line or region of text using good
> >> indentation rules (Emacs/ESS make this so easy by just hitting Tab while
> >> the cursor is in a line, or highlighting a region and hitting Esq q)
> >>
> >> - how to cause auto-indenting as you type braces.  For me, kate puts a {
> >> in column one
> >>
> >> Thanks for any pointers.
> >
> > Dear Frank,
> >
> > May I ask why you are moving to Kate from Emacs? I tried Kate with R (and
> > Python and LaTeX) and I really liked the folding (which seems a lot
> > better than all the not-really-functional hacks for getting folding with
> > R and Python code) and some of the function/class browsers.
> >
> > However, I specially missed:
> >
> > a) the possibility of opening as many R processes as I want, and placing
> > that buffer in wherever place and with whichever size I want.
> >
> > b) most of the rest of emacs, actually (hey, where did my shells go? and
> > my org-mode buffer? and my ...; not to talk about the keybindings).
> >
> > If you feel like it, I'd like to hear about your impressions.
> >
> > R.


Thanks for your reply, Frank.

>
> Good question Ramon.  We have dozens of R users in our department and
> many of them were not brought up on Emacs and find it hard to learn.  We
> are looking for an alternative to recommend for them.  I love Emacs
> myself and find that it is the fastest editor by a significant margin,
> and I am used to its keybindings.  But I prefer kate for printing and
> for managing multiple files in a project.  kate has a nice sidebar for
> navigating the files, and indicates which files have been changed since
> they were saved.  

Ouch, I had missed that.


> kate also schematically depicts nested code with side 
> symbols connected by vertical lines for {}.  

Yes, this feature I _really_ like. Nothing like it that I know of for emacs (I 
use fold-dwim, but I find it clunky).


> Scrolling of the R output 
> window is a little more logical in kate than in ESS.  I find myself
> having to type Esc-shift-> often in ESS/Emacs to get to the bottom of
> the R output but kate puts the cursor at the bottom.  Also I get a
> little frustrated with package management in Xemacs (I know however that
> it's nice to be able to load thousands of packages) related to file
> permissions, ftp commands, anonymous logins, etc.  And from a purely
> "looks" standpoint kate is superior.
>
> I tried jedit for a bit.  jedit has a lot of nice features but also has
> problems with indenting in R.
>

Thanks for your feedback. I think I'll play again with kate this weekend.

Best,

R.


> Frank
>
> >> Frank

-- 
Ramón Díaz-Uriarte
Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO)
(Spanish National Cancer Center)
Melchor Fernández Almagro, 3
28029 Madrid (Spain)
Fax: +-34-91-224-6972
Phone: +-34-91-224-6900

http://ligarto.org/rdiaz
PGP KeyID: 0xE89B3462
(http://ligarto.org/rdiaz/0xE89B3462.asc)



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