Syntax coloring in R console

Dear Liviu,

thanks for the programming tip! However, I do all my editing in vim,
which has had syntax highlighting for quite a while, as well as
auto-completion and a number of other goodies. But while I do most of
my programing in vim, I do most of my scientific studies simply using
the R interface and keeping a manually edited "lab book" apart from
the scripts. Clearly, one can do as much with Rstudio -- I just don't
see any advantages, but I do see a disadvantage in my specific case:
all sub-windows are confined to the "desktop". In other words, having
multiple plots on one monitor and a terminal with R command line is
not possible.

A question, though. Given that I have projects assorted in various
directories, how can I start RStudio opening a project stored in
.RData and .Rhistory of a given directory? I.e., how can I make
RStudio open the current directory (like R does), and not $HOME?

Thanks nonetheless,

j.


On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 3:48 PM, January Weiner
<january.weiner at mpiib-berlin.mpg.de> wrote:

RStudio might be a fine program, but it does not feature syntax
highlighting, which is the only thing I am missing from R Console (it
only colors the commands typed).

The idea is that you shouldn't use the R console for you main
programming needs, but only for quick and dirty checks. For the bulk
of programming tasks you are invited to use the integrated editor
(File > New > Script). The editor window does feature syntax
highlighting, and a very helpful completion mechanism (via <tab>).
Sending lines for execution to the terminal is as easy as clicking
'run lines' or ctrl+enter. If you're not a fan of keeping scripts for
your projects you can easily use temporary files that you don't save.

Moreover, the very idea of squeezing
all R windows into one "window-desktop" would be counterproductive in
my particular case.

Notice that all panes are freely resizable and can be resized to the
point of becoming hidden. Future releases will give more control over
the panes layout (I think).

Regards
Liviu

Thank you anyways!

j.

[1] http://alternativeto.net/software/rstudio/about

Regards
Liviu

I tried JGR, the GUI for R, but I have found the following problems
with this package:

- I was not able to change the background color from a repulsive grey,
- apparently, GNU readline is not implemented in that package, that
is, there is no functionality similar to ctrl-r (which searches
through the history for matching commands), something I use
frequently, and
- tab expansion is of limited use (e.g. doesn't browse files in the
current directory when expanding quoted arguments e.g. in
"read.table").

All in all, I'd be happy to continue using the plain R console, but
syntax highlighting would be nice. Any advice would be extremely
welcome.

Kind regards,

January

sessionInfo()

R version 2.12.2 (2011-02-25)
Platform: i486-pc-linux-gnu (32-bit)

locale:
?[1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 ? ? ? LC_NUMERIC=C
LC_TIME=en_US.utf8 ? ? ? ?LC_COLLATE=en_US.utf8 ? ? LC_MONETARY=C
?[6] LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8 ? ?LC_PAPER=en_US.utf8 ? ? ? LC_NAME=C
? ? ? ? ? ?LC_ADDRESS=C ? ? ? ? ? ? ?LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.utf8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] stats ? ? graphics ?grDevices utils ? ? datasets ?methods ? base


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--
-------- Dr. January Weiner 3 --------------------------------------
Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology
Charit?platz 1
D-10117 Berlin, Germany
Web?? : www.mpiib-berlin.mpg.de
Tel? ?? : +49-30-28460514

--
Do you know how to read?
http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
Do you know how to write?
http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail

--
-------- Dr. January Weiner 3 --------------------------------------
Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology
Charit?platz 1
D-10117 Berlin, Germany
Web?? : www.mpiib-berlin.mpg.de
Tel? ?? : +49-30-28460514