User manual

Chapter 1: Introduction to ESS 15
• ESS[S]: “,“ is bound to ess-smart-comma: If comma is invoked at the process marker of
an ESS inferior buffer, request and execute a command from ‘ess-handy-commands’
list. If ess-R-smart-operators is t ‘ess-smart-comma also inserts “ “ after comma.
• ESS[S], notably R: Variable ‘ess-handy-commands’ stores an alist of useful commands
which are called by ess-smart-comma in the inferior buffer.
Currently containing:
change-directory
ess-change-directory
help-index ess-display-index
help-object
ess-display-help-on-object
vignettes ess-display-vignettes
objects[ls] ess-execute-objects
search ess-execute-search
set-width ess-execute-screen-options
install.packages
ess-install.packages
library ess-library
setRepos ess-setRepositories
sos ess-sos
Handy commands: ess-library, ess-install.packages, etc - ask for item with com-
pletion and execute the correspond command. ess-sos is a interface to findFn function
in package sos. If package sos is not found, ask user for interactive install.
• ESS: New dynamic mode line indicator: Process status is automatically reflected in
all mode-lines of associated with the process buffers. Particularly useful for displaying
debug status of ess-tracebug and developer status of ess-developer in all associated
buffers.
• ESS: New ess-completing-read mechanism: ESS uses ido completions whenever pos-
sible. Variable ess-use-ido controls whether to use ido completion or not. Active by
default.
• ESS now supports comint fields for output and input detection. This feature is not
used by default, but might be useful in the future.
• ESS[S]: New custom variable inferior-ess-S-prompt to customize prompt detection
regular expression in the inferior ESS buffers. You can customize this variable to
enhance comint navigation (comint-previous-prompt and comint-next-prompt) the
inferior buffers.
• ESS[R]: Internal R completion retrieval (ess-R-complete-object-name) was rewritten
and is faster now.
• ESS is using process plist to store process specific variables, as opposed to buffer local
variables as it was using before. The use of buffer local variables to store process
variables is discouraged.