Recommendations for Windows Text Editor for R

Recommendations for Windows text editor for R

Vim is usually a favorite.

Best IDE / TextEditor for R

I've been using Eclipse/StatET. However, there's a new FLOSS IDE that was released today that looks interesting called RStudio. It even supports Sweave, so once it becomes more polished I may switch. User input seemed a little sluggish when I played with it earlier today however.

Update

They have been actively updating RStudio every month or two. It's been months since I encountered even a minor bug. And the features added are really useful--seamless package development and native Git support being the two that come to mind.

R text editors for introductory statistics courses

Given that you don't have an major specific requirements (like an object browser), it's probably best to use what you're already using as much as possible. Something like Textpad is very simple and can do syntax highlighting.

Here are a few more pointers:

• First of all, the R console that ships with Windows has it's own script editor. Just go File > New Script. It's very easy to use and you can execute code by highlighting it. If you just want something simple, I would stick with that.
• I use Eclipse (with StatET) on Windows, and I have used it on a Mac too. It's great if you want an extensive IDE (syntax highlighting, integrated console, SVN, etc.) with a small learning curve.
• JGR is also very good and platform independent.
• Sciviews (which has Tinn-R) has several other options, including SciViews-K which is an R extension for Komodo.
• Two others worth mentioning are Rattle and Rkward.
• Emacs and VIM have a bigger learning curve, but they're also very powerful, especially if you're already using them for something else.

Which modern IDE do you use with R

I just made the switch to Rkward, which I enjoy a lot more than what I was using earlier: notepad++ with NppToR. I hadn't heard of RStudio -- I'll have to check it out. Thanks!

Tools Commonly used to Program in R

Emacs has everything I commonly need:

• ESS (for R),
• AucTeX (for Latex),
• similarly rich 'modes' for other languages I use (C++, make, shell, ...),
• plus a lot of other modes you get quite used to as e.g. dired for directory/file browsing or org-mode as planner/to-do list,
• the SVN integration is very good too
• and there are probably a number of tools within Emacs I am now forgetting.

Works in text mode as well as graphical mode, and works essentially the same (incl ESS and AucTeX) on several operating systems (Linux mostly and Windows when I must). On Debian/Ubuntu all this is prepackaged and tends to work out of the box as well. For both Windows and OS X, Vincent Goulet has package very handy bundles, see here.

The 'daemon mode' is outstanding too -- I keep the same main Emacs session running and just connect and re-connect to it even when accessing the machine (via ssh or directly) from different computers.

Also see the EmacsWiki for more tips around Emacs.

Back to Emacs and R in particular. The R FAQ says it pretty well:

• 6.1 Is there Emacs support for R?
• 6.2 Should I run R from within Emacs?

and I like the affirmative and resounding answer to the second question: "Yes, definitely". I fully concur.

What is a good setup for LaTeX and R?

1. Yes, though some people I know found switching from WinEdt a bit hard.
2. I like gedit, the default text editor in Ubuntu, though there are a lot of other text editors that are also good. A matter of personal preference.
3. Try RKWard in the Ubuntu Software centre.
4. By searching in the Ubuntu software centre for "LaTeX" you will get some good results. I would try Texmaker.

Text Editor which shows \r\n?

With Notepad++, you can show end-of-line characters. It shows CR and LF, instead of "\r" and "\n", but it gets the point across. However, it will still insert the line breaks. But you do get to see the line-ending characters.

To use Notepad++ for this, open the View menu, open the Show Symbols slide out, and select either "Show all characters" or "Show end-of-line characters".

Text editor support for rmarkdown documents

The answer to any question involving editors is of course ... Emacs. In all seriousness:

• ESS for R
• Polymode (by one of the ESS authors) for mixed mode
• markdown mode by Jason Blevins (which is IIRC bundled with recent Emacs versions)

work well for me. I still go back to latex for 'real' papers with bibtex, but folks do this with markdown too so there will surely be a mode. And yes, it is cross-platform.

I use these on Ubuntu, and maintain the ESS package for Debian. So that one is always current. For polymode I just go to Github. It all works of course with MELPA and Emacs package archives.

Windows IDE / editor for a beginner

Start off simple. Do not not scare her with an IDE! They are overwhelming at first and are not core to developing software. I learnt rudimentary Java with Crimson Editor.
If I started again I'd probably go for Notepad++.

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