USING 64-BIT R FROM WITHIN AQUAMACS

1) Aquamacs is terrific because it comes bundled with about everything you need to start using R with it. No need to separately download ESS (emacs speaks statistics) or mess with the .ess-lisp files. Download Aquamacs from http://aquamacs.org/ and install it.

2) Now any file with an “.R” extension that is opened with aquamacs will automatically have syntax highlighting AND will allow you to start 64-bit R. I highly recommend checking out this page, http://ess.r-project.org/, and downloading the ESS reference card therein if you are new. Emacs has a bit of a learning curve, but you’ll begin loving its capabilities as an aid to programming very soon.

3) To start 64-bit R from within aquamacs hit <Control>-u then <Alt>-x then “R” then <Return>. Aquamacs will ask you for “Starting Args”. Here’s where you tell it you want to run 64-bit R. Type “--arch=x86_64” then <Return>. A new window will open up that is the R session.

4) That’s almost it. Just one more issue: graphing will crash (something to do with the new R and X11). Aquamacs has X11 as the default (null) graphics device. To change this, type in R: “options(device=”quartz”)”. Now your null graphics device is quartz and it should all work out. If you really want to use X11 to write graphics, you can use x11(type="Xlib")' for each new graph. What I do is to set “options(device=”quartz”) within my Rprofile.site file.