Re: Babel-R vs. ESS

[Erik Iverson <erikriverson@gmail.com>]

+1 for Ista. Use both.

 I tend to write a lot of R code for reading in data, and then merging
it with other sources and cleaning it. For my purposes, I usually do
those activities in a .R file (so using ESS in Emacs), and output a
'tidy' data.frame ready for analysis. Then I might use org-mode to
write a report using the data prepared in the .R script(s).

Related, if you haven't checked out knitr, you might look at that too.
It allows you to create reports in markdown and embed R code, similar
to org-mode. Somewhere I have support for this in ESS, but it's been a
while since I looked at it. Slidify is another cool package, using
markdown to create HTML slides.



On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 9:31 AM, Ista Zahn <istazahn@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Shiyuan,
>
> On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 3:08 AM, Shiyuan <gshy2014@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>     I am learning R and  use Emacs to work with R. I googled around and I
>> found two options: ESS and Org-R/Org-Babel.
>
> Org-Babel and ESS are not really alternatives; in fact the complement
> each other nicely. Org gives you a lightweight markup language, and a
> way to embed source code blocks. You can edit/evaluate/test R source
> code blocks using ESS.
>
>> Babel speaks multiple languages( Any languages?-if we write some sort of
>> parser, which I assume is not terribly difficult under Babel?).
>>
>> But if R is the primary language I would use, which option (Babel-R vs ESS)
>> is more advisable? I do want a nice integration of graphics/source code into
>> a paper/slides.
>
> Basically if you're using R in emacs you want to be using ESS. You can
> also use org-mode to easily create reports, slides, etc. with embedded
> R code.
>
>
> Best,
> Ista
>>
>> Any suggestions/options are appreciated.
>>
>> Shiyuan
>