Installing ESS

Most of this section is quoted from Claus's web site. To install Emacs:

• Unzip the emacs-21.2-fullbin-i386.tar.gz file to C:\^6.2 (1876 files). You must extract with the folders.
• Rename the c:\emacs-21.2 directory to C:\emacs
• Run the file C:\emacs\bin\addpm.exe

Test: Open the Start Menu/Programs/Gnu Emacs/Emacs. Emacs should start up. If you wish to use L^ATEX, then at this stage it is best to go to Claus's web page for more instructions. Otherwise, you may follow the instructions below to simply get ESS working. First of all, when Emacs starts it will read in the configuration file .emacs, you will need to specify a HOME variable that will contain the .emacs file. To create such a variable you simply follow the same instructions as in setting up PATH in Chapter 4.2, except now you will need to create a new name called HOME. It is recommended that you set it to C:\. Now, extract (unzip) the ESS file that you downloaded into the folder C:\emacs\site-lisp. You must extract with the folder names. The files will be extracted under the sub-folder ess-5.1.20, rename it to ess. Once this is done, open your favourite text editor, then type the following lines:

;; Set up ESS
(add-to-list 'load-path "c:/emacs/site-lisp/ess/lisp")
(require 'ess-site)

Note that you may need to change the path to where your emacs was installed. Open the file C:\emacs\site-lisp\ess\lisp\ess-site.el, go to line 254 and delete the two semi-colons (which means comments) so it now reads:

(setq-default inferior-R-program-name "Rterm")  ; msdos systems

Be sure to have your R_HOME\bin in the PATH. Claus suggested that to speed up ess, in Emacs, type

C-u 0 M-x byte-recompile-directory

and choose C:\emacs\site-lisp\ess\lisp. If you have been using (X)Emacs in other operating systems then you will know that C-u means Ctrl, u keys pressed sequentially, while M-x means Alt, x keys. You may also know that you can type the TAB key after typing byte-re to get the byte-recompile-directory. But I will not explain any more about tricks in Emacs here.