I think that this discussion could be of interest for the community.

I wrote last year (http://lists.wfu.edu/pipermail/gretl-users/2011-November/006995.html ) about the creation of a Gretl mode for ESS (there is already a R, Stata and SAS mode)  but didn't ask directly to the ESS developper.
This year, I asked them directly and they seems open and I think that It will be a great opportunity for Gretl to reach another type of users
But if you have additional information (community size, relevance to create this mode, etc) to help in this process it'll  be great

Ahmadou

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Vitalie Spinu <spinuvit@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 10:00 PM
Subject: Re: [ESS] Gretl mode for ESS
To: ahmadou dicko <dicko.ahmadou@gmail.com>
Cc: ess-help@r-project.org


  >> ahmadou dicko <dicko.ahmadou@gmail.com>
  >> on Sun, 30 Sep 2012 13:04:40 +0000 wrote:

  > Hi everyone,
  > I would like to know if adding a GRETL <http://gretl.sourceforge.net/> mode
  > to ESS is planned ?

I have never heard of gretl. How big is the community? And how does it
compare to R, ox and eviews?

  > There's already a basic gretl
  > mode<http://fossies.org/unix/misc/gretl-1.9.9.tar.gz:a/gretl-1.9.9/utils/emacs/gretl.el>inemacs
  > but it lacks several features availables in ESS R-mode (sending
  > command line, buffer, autocompletion, etc)

It's not that difficult to add a new interaction mode to ESS. The main
problem is not with adding a mode, but rather with maintaining it latter
on.

I can look into it, but not earlier than in a couple of months time.

  > So my question is if it's not planned, where to start ? (I would like to
  > help even if my elisp programming skillz is weak)

You can look into it yourself. Sources for inspiration are ess-julia.el,
which you probably should start with, and also ess-r-d.el for a more
complete picture.  Once the editing mode is there, the main step is to
construct ess-gretl-customize-alist with all the defaults needed for the
interaction with the subprocess, and then write 'gretl function for starting
a subprocess.


    Vitalie