Describe improved detection of bogus help buffers.

[ess.git] / doc / newfeat.texi

Changes/New Features in 5.2.9:
@itemize @bullet
@item @ESS{[R]} for Windows:  the \ directory character bug
with respect to ess-load-file has been eradicated.
@item @iESS{[SAS]}: @kbd{C-c C-r} and @kbd{C-c C-b} once again
work as intended and documented.
@item @ESS{[S]}: M-x ess-fix-EQ-assign is a bit more agressive.
@item @ESS{[S]}: Imenu now also shows setAs(), etc.
@item @ESS{[R]}: R function pattern enhanced with underlying code such that
 @kbd{M-C-a} (@code{ess-beginning-of-function}) etc now work for many more
 cases, including S4 method definitions.
@item @iESS{[R]}: myOwnhelp(1) no longer wrongly triggers help(1).
@item @ESS{[R]}: Improved detection of bogus help buffers: valid help
 buffers containing with the string ``no documentation''(e.g. contour)
 were being treated as bogus.
@item @ESS{[R]}: In R help buffers, if @code{options("help.try.all.packages" =
 TRUE)} then @code{?rlm} will list which packages rlm is defined in.  This help
 buffer is not bogus, but instead is now relabelled ``*help[R](rlm in
 packages)*''.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.2.8:
@itemize @bullet
@item iESS: [Tab] completes @strong{file} names ``inside string'' as in
earlier (<= 5.2.3) ESS versions.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.2.7:
@itemize @bullet
@item If you use Custom to change the variable ess-toolbar-items,
the new toolbar is used in all subsequent ESS buffers.
@item @ESS{[SAS]}: new feature:  if ess-sas-log-max >0 and
your .log grows to more than ess-sas-log-max bytes, just
the first ess-sas-log-max bytes are refreshed; this is helpful when your .sas program
generates lots of error messages and gets too big for emacs to display
@item @ESS{[R/S]}: @kbd{M-;} in R/S editing modes will now indent with
either one or two hashes depending on context.
@item @ESS{[R]}: David Whiting's Sweave extensions (to 'noweb')
are now available (from ess-swv.el loaded by default).
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.2.6:
@itemize @bullet
@item Removed non-ASCII characters in a few files.
@item @ESS{[R]}: now works better when UTF-8 locale is active; in
 particular, you get correct directional quotes in R's startup message
 for R-devel (unstable development version of R 2.1.0) when using
 environment variables LANGUAGE=en@@quot LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
@item @ESS{[SAS]}: toggling of .log mode improved (@kbd{F10}); toggling of
.lst mode now also available (@kbd{C-F10}); killing all buffers associated
with .sas program no longer bound to @kbd{C-F10} since its a bit overzealous.
@item S-Plus 7 for Windows is now recognized.
@item @ESS{[S]} (incl.@: R): in auto-fill mode, strings are not wrapped anymore.
@item @ESS{[S]} (incl.@: R): font-lock now correctly differs between R and S,
e.g., for "_"; both now fontify warning(.) and S does terminate() additionally.
@item Support for `bell' aka `beep' aka `ding' aka `alarm' in all inferior
modes: When \a is output ``to the the console'' at the beginning of a line,
the bell is rung.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.2.5:
@itemize @bullet
@item @ESS{[R]}: @kbd{C-c C-q} or @samp{Quit S} from the menu now should work
(again and less klunkily) and do not append @samp{-exited} to the
buffer name.  Further, the behavior of @code{(ess-cleanup)}, called from
ess-quit, now depends on the new customizable variable
@code{ess-S-quit-kill-buffers-p} which defaults to @code{nil}.
Consequently, the question @emph{``Delete all buffers associated
with ..?''} will not be asked anymore by default.
@item @ESS{[SAS]} -- ess-ebcdic-to-ascii-search-and-replace will now work
with the @code{recode} application as well which is available on many platforms
@item @ESS{[S]} (incl.@: R): Name completion for slots of S4 objects now works!
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.2.4:
@itemize @bullet
@item The documentation now includes an overview of how to use the emacs
TAGS facility for S functions.  (The distribution also used to contain a
directory @file{etc/other/Tags} where a ~1990 version of @file{etags.c} was
distributed; this is no longer relevant and so has been deleted.)
@item @ESS{[SAS]} -- When you are working with EBCDIC files on an ASCII
platform, .log NOTEs may display as gibberish since the EBCDIC
characters are not converted to ASCII prior to their display.  So,
the function ess-ebcdic-to-ascii-search-and-replace is provided for
convenience and is bound to @kbd{C-F11}.  This function requires the
@code{dd} command (only available on unix or unix-like platforms).
@item ESS: Completion of object names is now always done dynamically rather
than allowing the option of using a pre-computed database (by
@code{ess-create-object-name-db}) since modern computers seem fast
enough for dynamic completion.  (We expect few users, if any, have
been using the pre-computed database method.)
@item ESS: object completion in iESS buffers running on Windows was
very slow (for GNU Emacs, but not XEmacs) and has now been fixed.
Further, it was more or less broken for all versions of S-plus 6.x,
and has been fixed to work everywhere but with the Windows' GUI of
S-plus.  The list of objects now shows unique names also when an
object appears more than once in the search path.
@item @ESS{[R]}: Completion of object names now also includes those
starting with ``.''.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.2.3:
@itemize @bullet
@item ESS: When new inferior ESS processes are created, by default they
will replace the current buffer (this restores behavior from pre
5.2.0). If you wish new ESS processes to start in another window of the
current frame, set inferior-ess-same-window to nil.
@item New variables inferior-Splus-args and inferior-R-args provide a
way to pass command line arguments to starting S and R processes.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.2.2:
@itemize @bullet
@item bug-fixes for 5.2.1 (require 'executable), html docs, etc.
@item ess-lisp-directory/../doc/info added to Info-directory-list
if ess-info not found by info
@item @ESS{[R]}: If you have other versions of R on your
exec-path, such as "R-1.8.1" with Unix or "rw1081" with Windows,
ESS will find them and create appropriate functions, such as
@kbd{M-x R-1.8.1} or @kbd{M-x rw1081}, for calling them.
By default only Unix programs beginning "R-1" and
"R-2" and Windows programs parallel to the
version of R in your exec-path will be found,
but see ess-r-versions and ess-rterm-versions for ways to find other
versions of R.
@item @ESS{[R]}: Other versions of R, such as "R-1.8.1" on Unix and "rw1081" on
Windows, are added to the
"ESS / Start Process / Other" menu.
@item @ESS{[S]}: If you have other versions of S-Plus on your Windows computer,
such as S-Plus 6.1 or S-Plus 4.5, ESS will find them and create appropriate
functions, such as @kbd{M-x splus61}, for calling the console version (Sqpe)
inside an emacs buffer.  By default only
programs installed in the default location will be found, but see
ess-SHOME-versions for ways to find other versions of S-Plus.
@item @ESS{[S]}: Other versions of Sqpe on Windows, such as "splus61",
are added to the
"ESS / Start Process / Other" menu.
@item @ESS{[R]}: (bug fix) ess-quit (bound to @kbd{C-c C-q}) should now quit the
inferior R process, when issued from either the inferior buffer, or from
a .R buffer.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.2.1:
@itemize @bullet
@item @ESS{[S]} (R and S-plus): now have toolbar support
with icons to evaluate code in the inferior process or to switch
there.  This code is experimental and likely to change as XEmacs/Emacs
issues get resolved. The toolbar should be enabled if your Emacs
displays images, but can be disabled with the variable ess-use-toolbar.
Thanks to David Smith from Insightful for the S-plus logo.
@item @ESS{[SAS]}: ess-sas-graph-view (@kbd{F12}) enhanced; you can specify
external file viewers for each graphics file type via the alist
ess-sas-graph-view-viewer-alist; also .jpg/.gif are now handled
by image-mode on XEmacs, if available, otherwise by graphics
primitives as before
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.2.0:
@itemize @bullet
@item @ESS{[BUGS]}:  new info documentation!  now supports interactive
processing thanks to @uref{mailto:Aki.Vehtari@@hut.fi, Aki Vehtari};
new architecture-independent unix support as well as support for BUGS v. 0.5
@item @ESS{[SAS]}:  convert .log to .sas with ess-sas-transcript;
info documentation improved; Local Variable bug fixes;
SAS/IML statements/functions now highlighted; files edited
remotely by ange-ftp/EFS/tramp are recognized and pressing
SUBMIT opens a buffer on the remote host via the local variable
ess-sas-shell-buffer-remote-init which defaults to "ssh";
changed the definition of the variable ess-sas-edit-keys-toggle
to boolean rather than 0/1; added the function ess-electric-run-semicolon
which automatically reverse indents lines containing only "run;";
@kbd{C-F1} creates MS RTF portrait from the current buffer;
@kbd{C-F2} creates MS RTF landscape from the current buffer;
@kbd{C-F9} opens a SAS DATASET with PROC INSIGHT rather than PROC FSVIEW;
"inferior" aliases for SAS batch:  @kbd{C-c C-r} for submit region,
@kbd{C-c C-b} for submit buffer, @kbd{C-c C-x} for goto .log; @kbd{C-c C-y} for goto .lst
@item @ESS{[S]}: Pressing underscore ("_") once inserts " <- " (as before);
pressing underscore twice inserts a literal underscore.  To stop this
smart behaviour, add "(ess-smart-underscore nil)" to your .emacs after
ess-site has been loaded;
ess-dump-filename-template-proto (new name!) now can be
customized successfully (for S language dialects);
Support for Imenu has been improved; set ess-imenu-use-S to non-nil to
get an "Imenu-S" item on your menubar;
ess-help: Now using nice underlines (instead of `nuke-* ^H_')
@item @ESS{[R]}:  After (require 'essa-r), @kbd{M-x ess-r-var} allows to load
numbers from any Emacs buffer into an existing *R* process;
@kbd{M-x ess-rdired} gives a ``directory editor'' of R objects;
fixed ess-retr-lastvalue-command, i.e. .Last.value bug
(thanks to David Brahm)
@item ESS: Support for creating new window frames has been added to
ESS.  Inferior ESS processes can be created in dedicated frames by
setting inferior-ess-own-frame to t.  ESS help buffers can also open in
new frames; see the documentation for ess-help-own-frame for details.
(Thanks to Kevin Rodgers for contributing code.)
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.24:
@itemize @bullet
@item The version number is now correct even inside ESS/Emacs
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.23:
@itemize @bullet
@item Minor more Makefile clean up.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.22:
@itemize @bullet
@item Besides info documentation, PDF and HTML
documentation are also provided (instead of built using "make") and available
on the web as well; see @uref{http://ess.r-project.org/,
 ESS web page} and @uref{http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/general/ESS/doc, StatLib}
@item Now that info documentation is available, the
README.* files are no longer supported.  However, they
are still distributed for what it's worth.
@item ESS is now an XEmacs package!  See
@uref{http://www.xemacs.org/Install/index.html, XEmacs Installation HOWTO}
for details (specifically, items 10-15).
@item @ESS{[SAS]}: more user-friendly enhancements for remote
SAS batch jobs with Kermit file transfers (LOG and OUTPUT
function key features now supported).  Multiple shells
now supported so you can run SAS on different computers
from different buffers by setting the buffer-local variable
ess-sas-shell-buffer to unique buffer names.
@item Major re-vamping of Makefile/Makeconf.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.21:
@itemize @bullet
@item @ESS{[SAS]}: info documentation now available!, see
ESS->Help for SAS; @kbd{F12} opens GSASFILE nearest point for viewing
either within emacs, when available, or via an external viewer;
more syntax highlighting keywords; more enhancements for remote
SAS batch jobs with Kermit; new framework for remote SAS interactive
jobs, see ess-remote
@item @ESS{[S]}: info documentation now available!, see
ESS->Help for the S family
@item Makefile: tag now independent of rel; info files
made by doc/Makefile and installed in new info sub-directory
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.20:
@itemize @bullet
@item New `options()$STERM' in the S dialects (S, S-Plus, R).
The S program can determine the environment in which it is
currently running.  ESS sets the option to `iESS' or `ddeESS'
when it starts an S language process.  We recommend other specific
values for S language processes that ESS does not start.
@item New `ess-mouse-me' function, assigned to S-mouse-3 by default.
User may click on a word or region and then choose from the
menu to display the item, or a summary, or a plot, etc.
This feature is still under development.
@item GNU Emacs 21.1 is now supported (fixed for S dialects, SAS & BUGS),
(some from Stephen Eglen).
@item XEmacs 21.x is now supported (fixed w32-using-nt bug)
@item XEmacs on Win (NT) is better supported.
@item Workaround for bug in Sqpe+6 (S-PLUS 6 for Win).
@item should now work even when imenu is not available (for old XEmacsen).
@item @ESS{[SAS]}: XEmacs-Imenu fix; @kbd{C-TAB} is globalized along with your
function-key definitions, if specified; you can specify your SAS
library definitions outside of autoexec.sas for ess-sas-data-view
with SAS code placed in the variable ess-sas-data-view-libname,
also the dataset name is defaulted to the nearest permanent dataset
to point; Speedbar support now works for permanent datasets, please
ignore first./last.; new font-locking is now the default with more
improvements for font-locking PROCs, macro statements, * ; and %* ;
comments; you can toggle sas-log-mode with @kbd{F10} which will font-lock
your .log (if it isn't too big); submit remote .sas files accessed
with ange-ftp, EFS or Tramp (Kermit is experimental) by setting
ess-sas-submit-method to 'sh; ess-sas-submit-command and
ess-sas-submit-command-options are buffer-local so you can have
local file variable sections at the end of your .sas files to
request different executables or specify special options and the
local file variables are re-read at submit instead of only at file
open so that if you make a change it is picked up immediately;
@item @ESS{[BUGS]}: font-lock with `in' fixed.
@item for STATA: font-lock bug fixed.
@item for Rd mode: @kbd{C-c C-v} and `switch-process' in menu.
further, @kbd{C-c C-f} prefix (Rd-font) for inserting or surrounding a word
by things such as \code@{.@}, \code@{\link@{.@}@}, \emph@{.@} etc.
@item new functions (ess-directory-function) and (ess-narrow-to-defun)
ess-directory <-> default-directory logic (Jeff Mincy).
@item Re-organized Makefile and fixed a few bugs.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.19:
@itemize @bullet
@item S+6 now supported (Tony Rossini (Unix) and Rich Heiberger (Windows))
@item New BUGS support through @ESS{[BUGS]} mode (Rodney Sparapani)
Templates assist you in writing .bug and .cmd code (.cmd and .log
are replaced by .bmd and .bog to avoid emacs extension collisions).
Substitution" parameters facilitate "automagic" generation of
data...in" and "init...in" filenames, "const N=" from your data
file and "monitor()/stats()" commands.  Activated by pressing @kbd{F12}.
@item Fixes for `ess-smart-underscore' SAS breakage (Rich Heiberger)
@item You can change between PC and Unix, local and global SAS function-key
definitions interactively (Rich Heiberger)
@item @kbd{C-Submit} a highlighted region to SAS batch (Rodney Sparapani)
@item New and improved SAS syntax highlighting (Rodney Sparapani)
To get the new functionality, set ess-sas-run-make-regexp to nil.
Also available in .log files via @kbd{F10}.
@item Open a permanent SAS dataset for viewing via @kbd{F9} (Rodney Sparapani)
You must have the library defined in autoexec.sas for it to work.
@item User-friendly defaults for `sas-program', `ess-sas-batch-pre-command'
and `ess-sas-batch-post-command' as well Customize support for these
and other @ESS{[SAS]} variables (Rodney Sparapani)
@item `ess-sas-suffix-2' now defaults to .dat via @kbd{F11} (Rodney Sparapani)
@item Emacs/XEmacs, Unix/Windows issues collectively handled in ess-emcs.el
@item defadvice solves problem of missing *ESS* (thanks to Jeff Mincy)
@item Improved manual a bit by including things that were only in `README'.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.18:
@itemize @bullet
@item New `ess-smart-underscore' function, now assigned to "_" by default.
Inserts `ess-S-assign' (customizable " <- "), unless inside string
and comments where plain "_" is used instead. (MM)
@item Fixes for longstanding interactive SAS breakage (RMH)
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.17:
@itemize @bullet
@item Documentation for Windows Installation (Rich Heiberger)
@item removal of ess-vars, finalization of customize support (in the
sense that there is no more use of ess-vars, but that we need to
fix ess-cust) (AJ Rossini)
@item Many small (and large) fixes/contributions (MMaechler)
@item addition of the "S-equal" variable and provide @kbd{M-x ess-add-MM-keys}
a way to remap "_" to `ess-S-assign', typically " <- ", but
customizable. (MMaechler)
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.16:
@itemize @bullet
@item BUG FIXES
@item Better SAS support
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.15:
@itemize @bullet
@item BUG FIXES
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.14:
@itemize @bullet
@item Yet more fixes to SAS mode, (Rich Heiberger and Rodney Sparapani)
@item Customize support (for most Emacsen which support it) (AJRossini)
@item ARC and ViSta support out of the box, and fixes for XLispStat (AJRossini)
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.13:
@itemize @bullet
@item Version numbering finally all depending on the ./VERSION file,
thanks to Martin Maechler.
@item Yet more fixes to SAS mode, thanks to Rich Heiberger.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.12:
@itemize @bullet
@item Splus 5.1 stabilized, thanks to Martin Maechler, Bill Venables,
Chuck Taylor, and others.
@item More fixes to SAS mode, thanks to Rodney Sparapani
and Rich Heiberger.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.11:
@itemize @bullet
@item More fixes to Stata mode, thanks to
@uref{mailto:brendan@@essex.ac.uk, Brendan Halpin}.
@item fixed bugs in ESS-elsewhere, thanks to many testers
@item README.SPLUS4WIN has DETAILED instructions for S-PLUS 2000, thanks
to @uref{mailto:brahm@@alum.mit.edu, David Brahm}.
@item Fixes to SAS mode, thanks to Rodney Sparapani
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.10:
@itemize @bullet
@item More fixes to Stata mode
@item primitive generic version of ESS-elsewhere
@item Small fixes to SAS/Stata.
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.9:
@itemize @bullet
@item Stata mode works
@item Literate Data Analysis using Noweb works
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.8:
@itemize @bullet
@item Bug fixes
@item R documentation mode defaults changed
@end itemize

Changes/New Features in 5.1.2:
@itemize @bullet
@item  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) @kbd{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.
@end itemize