ANNOUNCING ESS
**************
Annoucing the release of ESS-5.1.13 (Emacs Speaks Statistics).
------------------------------------------------------------
ESS is an Emacs package which provides a standard interface between
statistical programs and statistical processes. It is intended to
provide assistance for interactive statistical programming and data
analysis, and was is based on and extends the capabilities of S-mode.
The code is freely available but is not in the public domain. It is
distributed under the GNU GPL. Please read the file COPYING which comes
with the distribution, for more information about the license.
For more detailed information about ESS's abilities, please read the
file README with the distribution.
And to help remove any further confusion:
The name is __ESS__. Not ESS-mode.
Thank you :-).
New Features
============
Changes/New Features in 5.1.13:
* Version numbering finally all depending on the ./VERSION file,
thanks to Martin Maechler.
* Yet more fixes to SAS mode, thanks to Rich Heiberger
(<rmh@surfer.stat.temple.edu>).
Changes/New Features in 5.1.12:
* Splus 5.1 stabilized, thanks to Martin Maechler, Bill Venables,
Chuck Taylor, and others.
* More fixes to SAS mode, thanks to Rodney Sparapani
(<spara002@duke.edu>) and Rich Heiberger
(<rmh@surfer.stat.temple.edu>).
Changes/New Features in 5.1.11:
* More fixes to Stata mode, thanks to Brendan Halpin
(<brendan@essex.ac.uk>)
* fixed bugs in ESS-elsewhere, thanks to many testers
* README.SPLUS4WIN has DETAILED instructions for S-PLUS 2000, thanks
to David Brahm (<brahm@alum.mit.edu>).
* Fixes to SAS mode, thanks to Rodney Sparapani
(<spara002@duke.edu>)
Changes/New Features in 5.1.10:
* More fixes to Stata mode
* primitive generic version of ESS-elsewhere
* Small fixes to SAS/Stata.
Changes/New Features in 5.1.9:
* Stata mode works
* Literate Data Analysis using Noweb works
Changes/New Features in 5.1.8:
* Bug fixes
* R documentation mode defaults changed
Beginning with ESS 5.1.2 we are able to use inferior iESS mode to
communicate directly with a running S-Plus 4.x process using the
Microsoft DDE protocol. We use the familiar (from Unix ESS) C-c C-n
and related key sequences to send lines from the S-mode file to the
inferior S process. We continue to edit S input files in ESS[S] mode
and transcripts of previous S sessions in ESS Transcript mode. All
three modes know the S language, syntax, and indentation patterns and
provide the syntactic highlighting that eases the programming tasks.
For Microsoft platforms, the version of Emacs that this has been
tested with is NTEmacs 20.x, x greater than 2. More information about
NTEmacs can be retrieved from:
* `http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/voelker/ntemacs.html'
including information on retrieval and installation. This has not
yet been tested with XEmacs for Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT.
Current Features
================
* Languages Supported:
* S dialects (S 3/4, S-PLUS 3.x/4.x/5.x, and R)
* LispStat dialects (XLispStat, ViSta under development)
* SAS
* Stata
* SPSS dialects (SPSS, Fiasco (GNU project)) (under development)
* SCA (under development)
* Editing source code (S, LispStat, SAS)
* Syntactic indentation and highlighting of source code
* Partial evaluations of code
* Loading and error-checking of code
* Source code revision maintenance
* Interacting with the process (S, LispStat, SAS)
* Command-line editing
* Searchable Command history
* Command-line completion of S object names and file names
* Quick access to object lists and search lists
* Transcript recording
* Interface to the help system
* Transcript manipulation (S3, S+3, S4, R, XLispStat)
* Recording and saving transcript files
* Manipulating and editing saved transcripts
* Re-evaluating commands from transcript files
* Help File Editing (R)
* Syntactic indentation and highlighting of source code.
* Sending Examples to running ESS process.
* Previewing
Stability
=========
Versions 5.1.x are meant as a beta-level releases. While some bugs
are fixed from 5.0, others have been introduced, especially with
regards to new features. See the file Doc/TODO for details. Bug
reports are solicited; see the BUGS section below. Patches or
suggested coding fixes with bug reports are much appreciated!
Requirements
============
ESS version 5.1.n (n >= 2) requires Emacs version 19.29 or later, or
version XEmacs 19.14 or later. It has been most thoroughly tested with:
* S-PLUS versions 3.3, 3.4, 4.5, 5.0
* R versions >=0.49
* XLispStat versions >=3.50
* S4
* SAS
* Stata >=6.0
on the following platforms
* SunOS (all)
* Solaris (all)
* SGI (all)
* Linux (S-PLUS 5.0, R, XLispStat, S4, Stata 6.0)
* Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT (SPLUS 4.5)
with the following Emacsen:
* Emacs 19.29, 19.34, 20.3, 20.4, XEmacs 19.16, XEmacs 20.4, XEmacs
21.0
* Emacs 19.28 with SAS (with additional modifications)
* NTEmacs 20.3.1 with S-PLUS 4.5.
It may need some work with other configurations. We include
configuration suggestions for emacs 19.28 in Doc/README-19.28. These
are the changes we made in order to use ESS with SAS on a Digital Alpha
running Emacs 19.28.
Getting the Latest Version
==========================
The latest versions of ESS are always available by WWW from:
`http://ess.stat.wisc.edu/'
`ftp://ess.stat.wisc.edu/pub/ESS/'
The HTML version of the documentation can be found at:
`http://stat.ethz.ch/ESS/'
The latest (no more than 24 hours behind the developers) version of
ESS can also be retrieved using anonymous CVS. Details on this are
forthcoming.
Reporting Bugs
==============
Please send bug reports, suggestions etc. to
<ESS-bugs@stat.math.ethz.ch>
The easiest way to do this is within Emacs by typing
`M-x ess-submit-bug-report'
This also gives the maintainers valuable information about your
installation which may help us to identify or even fix the bug.
Note that comments, suggestions, words of praise and large cash
donations are also more than welcome.
Mailing Lists
=============
There is a mailing list for discussions and announcements relating to
ESS. Join the list by sending an e-mail with "subscribe ess-help" (or
"help") in the body to <ess-help-request@stat.math.ethz.ch>;
contributions to the list may be mailed to
<ess-help@stat.math.ethz.ch>. Rest assured, this is a fairly
low-volume mailing list.
The purposes of the mailing list include
- helping users of ESS to get along with it. - discussing aspects
of using ESS for GNU Emacs and XEmacs. - suggestions for improvements.
- announcements of new [beta] releases of ESS. - posting small patches
to ESS.
Authors
=======
* A.J. Rossini (http://www.biostat.washington.edu/~rossini/)
<rossini@stat.sc.edu>
* Richard M. Heiberger
(http://www.sbm.temple.edu/departments/statistics/)
<rmh@fisher.stat.temple.edu>
* Kurt Hornik (http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik)
<hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at>
* Martin Maechler (http://stat.ethz.ch/~maechler/)
<maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch>
License
=======
ESS is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later
version.
ESS is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
in the file COPYING in the same directory as this file for more details.