($Revision: 1.6 $, for ESS 5.1.x)
This is the README file for the distribution of ESS version 5.1.8, the alpha/beta series we are using on the way to producing 5.2 (the next stable distribution). ESS is an Emacs-Lisp interface for interactive statistical programming and data analysis. Languages supported include: S dialects (S 3/4, S-PLUS 3.x, and R), LispStat dialects (XLispStat, ViSta), and SAS. Stata and SPSS dialect (SPSS, PSPP) support is being examined for possible future implementation (a preliminary Stata mode is distributed).
ESS grew out of the desire for bug fixes and extensions to S-mode-4.8. In particular, XEmacs support as well as extensions to incorporate R were desired. In addition, with new modes being developed for R, Stata, and SAS, it was felt that providing for a unifying framework would eliminate differences in the user interface, as well as to provide for faster development of production tools and statistical analysis. 5.0 has, for its guts, the basic framework from S-mode. However, it has been cleaned, streamlined, brought closer to conformance as a standard GNU Emacs package, and redesigned for modularity and reuse.
The current development team is led by A.J. (Tony) Rossini (rossini@biostat.washington.edu), who did the initial port to XEmacs and has been the primary coder. Martin Maechler (maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch) and Kurt Hornik (hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at) have assisted with S-PLUS, S4, R, and XLispStat sub-modes, and Richard M. Heiberger (rmh@fisher.stat.temple.edu) has done much of the work for implementing the SAS sub-mode, as well as assisted with S-PLUS (under MS Windows and remote access) and S4 development. Douglas Bates (bates@stat.wisc.edu) contributed the initial S4 mode, as well as provided disk space, ftp and http access to the source for development purposes.
We are grateful to David M. Smith, the previous developer (for S-mode 3.x and 4.x), as well as to the initial developers of S-mode, Doug Bates, Ed Kademan and Frank Ritter.
In addition, some of the code has been and will be borrowed from Tom Cook (from his excellent SAS mode) and Thomas Lumley (preliminary Stata mode), gratefully (from us) and with permission (from them).
The name is ESS. Not ESS-mode.
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.
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 20.2 and 20.3. More information about NTEmacs can be retrieved from:
including information on retrieval and installation. This has not yet been tested with XEmacs for Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT.
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!
ESS version 5.1.8 requires Emacs version 19.29 or later, or version XEmacs 19.14 or later. It has been most thoroughly tested with:
on the following platforms
with the following Emacsen:
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.
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.
To be added.
Please send bug reports, suggestions etc. to
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.
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.
This document was generated on 27 November 1999 using the texi2html translator version 1.54.