Trying to render R4DS to pdf - r

When I try to render the latest version of the book R for Data Science (R4DS), I get as far as LaTeX compilation, then am stopped by the following error message.
! Text line contains an invalid character.
l.406 #> -- ^^[
[1mAttaching packages^^[[22m --------------------------------...
Error: LaTeX failed to compile _main.tex. See https://yihui.org/tinytex/r/#debugging for debugging tips. See _main.log for more info.
>
This corresponds to the part of the R4DS book where we are shown how to load the tidyverse and, looking at the _main.tex file, I see many lines with what look like ANSI escape sequences starting on this line. They have the form ^[[1m, ^[[22m, and so on. I manually compiled the LaTeX output using lualatex and found that there are dozens if not hundreds of examples of this throughout the book. I suspected it was because I was using the colorout package in R, but it appears that that package is required, so others who are rendering successfully must be using it too. I believe I have successfully updated all relevant packages.

It looks like I "solved" the problem by changing an option in the _common.R file from crayon.enabled=TRUE to crayon.enabled=FALSE. This removed the ANSI escape sequences from the book. Previously I had tried setting options(crayon.enabled=FALSE) in my R session, but this was evidently being overridden by the setting in _common.R.
Update: 23 Nov 2022
The process for rendering the files is completely different now because of the switch to Quarto. Here's how I did it.
Rscript -e 'update.packages()'
Rscript -e 'install.packages('quarto')'
Rscript -e 'devtools::install_github("hadley/r4ds")
git clone https://github.com/hadley/r4ds.git
cd r4ds
Next, I wrote a small perl script to avoid the error messages I was getting about trying to render html material to pdf. (I'm omitting a lot of dead-ends I encountered in the process.)
#!/usr/bin/perl
use File::Slurp qw(prepend_file);
my #files = glob( '*.qmd' );
my $header = "\n---\nprefer-html: true\n---\n\n";
foreach my $file (#files) {
prepend_file($file, $header);
}
I ran the above script in the r4ds directory.
Next I loaded R and did the following:
library(quarto)
quarto_render("index.qmd", output_format = "pdf")
The above failed with the error message: "\begin{document} not found". Luckily, the aborted process leaves an index.tex file I can process and also gives a line number for the error. I went to that line number in the index.tex file and deleted the block of html I found there.
After that, I ran
lualatex index.tex
twice and got a successful render, minus the cover page. (You could presumably run xelatex index.tex instead.) There are a lot of problems with my render, such as the plots being too large to fit on the page. If I decide to spend time fixing them (unlikely, since Hadley seems to want us to use the online version) I'll modify this answer.

Related

Is there a way to create an R knitr program file which is also an R (console) program file?

I've started using knitr (without pander) and I'm very impressed.
I can find instructions for writing inline knitr markdown – which will be processed even though a hash is written at the beginning of a line (which will be useful). However, it has occurred to me that if knitr can read and process such information, perhaps there is a way to write ALL markdown instructions e.g. ```{r} with a hash at the beginning of the line ? I.e., I would like it if ##```{r} also worked when run via knit.
This would allow me to create files which work without errors when run using R console and also when run via knit – which might be useful when files are submitted for review.

How to address an Rscript parse error: premature EOF?

Running my working R script in the windows command line (cmd) using Rscript results in a parsing error (premature EOF).
When I run the script in RStudio, it compiles and runs as expected.
I have read the Rscript page in R documentation, and I see that the problem must be due to spaces in my script itself, which probably make it into the cmd console somehow during parsing, but that's as far as I get.
Or should I have done something with the #! functionality mentioned therein?
I am trying to run it on cmd:
Rscript .\start_app.r
I am in the right working directory, and have set the folder containing Rscript in my environment.
The script is too long to share, and I am too inexperienced to give you the parts that make it break (otherwise I wouldn't be here), but it is full of functions, if statements and the like, that use curly brackets and are indented. I also often include empty rows (someteimes indented) for readability. It makes use of the shiny-package. An example could be:
islocal = nchar(Sys.getenv("LOCAL"))>1 | interactive()
if (islocal){
source('../../path/app/variables/styling.R')
} else {
source('./variables/styling.R')
}
As the example above, it also includes other R code called via source()
Can that somehow make it to the cmd line and be incorrectly compiled?
I get the following messages:
Error: parse error: premature EOF
(right here) ------^
Execution halted
Not enough memory resources are available to process this command.
(I guess the second message is an unrelated issue, but include it here just to be sure.)
As suggested in a comment, the solution was changing the encoding.
As mentionned by the requestor himself, Using "Save with Encoding -> ISO-8895-1 (System default)" solves the issue.

xelatex, luatex issues when building pdf of demo book

I can build the gitbook of the demo just fine.
If I attempt to build a pdf, the .tex file is made by pandoc, but xelatex compilation bombs. I get a message in the Build window that's incomplete.
If I manually compile in the shell, I get the following output. Short story-- it would seem that there's code somewhere, probably in pandoc, that uses
\xetex_if_engine:F and
\luatex_if_engine:TF
which apparently have been non-functional since 1-1-2017.
But I can't be the first person to try to compile a pdf since January. Any ideas?
The LaTeX log shows LaTeX2e <2011/06/27>, which is too old, and you will need to refresh your filename database (FNDB) as instructed here,

R package knitr misses R chunks

I haven't been able to use the neater knitter package with the code chunks.
Basically there's only a few number of occasions in which it interprets them well, but for the most of it the chunks are not recognized as such. That is:
Running a markdown from RStudio only renders chunks before the file is saved. If the file has been saved, then it will show the code as is: no R output.
I also tried using knitr from within LyX, and this presented other problems. The simplest example knitr.lyx was rendered correctly as a pdf, but not html. Using more complicated documents, like the RJournal template showed other errors.
Rscript --verbose --no-save --no-restore
At first I thought it had to do with my Rstudio installation, but now I'm not so sure anymore.
By the way, I'm on Ubuntu 15.04 and the files that I'm using are examples from the documentation:
Rstudio > New File > Rmarkdown... renders R output only before it's saved.
knitr's manual in LyX from Github repo.
I found the answer for this.
It's very obvious and yet easy to overlook if you don't know it.
The problem was in saving the file with the wrong extension.
If you're using R code chunks you need .Rmd extension in Rstudio.
As I was starting with markdown I was using .md. Pfff.

More efficient R / Sweave / TeXShop work-flow?

I've now got everything to work properly on my Mac OS X 10.6 machine so that I can create decent looking LaTeX documents with Sweave that include snippets of R code, output, and LaTeX formatting together. Unfortunately, I feel like my work-flow is a bit clunky and inefficient:
Using TextWrangler, I write LaTeX code and R code (surrounded by <<>>= above and # below R code chunk) together in one .Rnw file.
After saving changes, I call the .Rnw file from R using the Sweave command
Sweave(file="/Users/mymachine/Documents/Assign4.Rnw",
syntax="SweaveSyntaxNoweb")
In response, R outputs the following message:
You can now run LaTeX on 'Assign4.tex'
So then I find the .tex file (Assign4.tex) in the R directory and copy it over to the folder in my documents ~/Documents/ where the .Rnw file is sitting (to keep everything in one place).
Then I open the .tex file (e.g. Assign4.tex) in TeXShop and compile it there into pdf format. It is only at this point that I get to see any changes I have made to the document and see if it 'looks nice'.
Is there a way that I can compile everything with one button click? Specifically it would be nice to either call Sweave / R directly from TextWrangler or TeXShop. I suspect it might be possible to code a script in Terminal to do it, but I have no experience with Terminal.
Please let me know if there's any other things I can do to streamline or improve my work flow.
I use a Makefile of the following form for my Sweave documents:
pdf: myfile.tex
R CMD texi2pdf myfile.tex
myfile.tex: myfile.Rnw
R CMD Sweave myfile.Rnw
Then I can build the document in one step in the Mac OS Terminal by running the command make pdf
I'm sure there is a way to bring this closer to your one-click goal in Mac OS X, but this works well enough for me.
One-click Sweaving is easy to do in TeXShop using the Sweave.sh script by Gregor Gorjanc.
Get it from http://cran.r-project.org/contrib/extra/scripts/Sweave.sh and put it in your ~/Library/TeXShop/bin/ folder.
Then add the following files to your ~/Library/TeXShop/engines/ folder:
As Sweave.engine:
#!/bin/bash
~/Library/TeXShop/bin/Sweave.sh -ld "$1"
As SweaveNoClean.engine:
#!/bin/bash
~/Library/TeXShop/bin/Sweave.sh -nc -ld "$1"
You'll have to set the permissions on Sweave.sh and the two engine files to allow execution.
To Sweave with one click, restart TeXShop after adding these files, open the Sweave document (with Rnw extension) and in the dropdown menu above the document window, change it from LaTeX to Sweave or SweaveNoClean.
BEWARE: The "Sweave" option wll clean up after itself, deleting all the extra files LaTeX and Sweave creates. If your file is called myfile.Rnw, this will include files called myfile.R and myfile.tex. So a word to the wise: make sure the basename of your Rnw file is unique; then nothing unexpected will be written over and then deleted.
The SweaveNoClean option does not clean up after itself. This makes sure you don't delete anything unexpected; though it could still write over a file called myfile.tex if you Sweave a myfile.Rnw. This also doesn't delete any graphics that have been created, in case you want to have them separate from your full typeset document.
On the bash shell command line:
R CMD Sweave foo.Rnw && pdflatex foo.tex
Runs Sweave, and if that succeeds it goes on to do pdflatex. Out pops a pdf. If you've got this in a bash Terminal then just hit up-arrow to get it back and do it again. And again. And Again.
Makefile solution also good.
RStudio has a button that does this in one go. One caveat is that it runs in its own session, so any workspace variables you may have set are ignored.
Just a note: you can actually call things like pdflatex etc. directly from R using texi2dvi (in the tools package). For example:
Sweave(file="/Users/mymachine/Documents/Assign4.Rnw")
texi2pdf("Assign4.tex")
would compile your Rnw file into a pdf. Thus, no need to leave R to handle the tex->pdf step.
I use these (saved as sweave.engine and sweavebibtex.engine) for custom engines in texshop. I usually work up a code chunk in R, then copy the block into the rnw file I have open in texshop. I'd love a solution that lets me do syntax highlighting and spelling correction of R and tex in the same document (that isnt emacs).
#!/bin/bash
echo 'SWEAVE | PDFLATEX. Custom engine--Akasurak-16Nov2009'
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/texbin:/usr/local/bin
R CMD Sweave "$1"
pdflatex "${1%.*}"
and the second, for doing bibtex as well:
#!/bin/bash
date
before="$(date +%s)"
echo 'SWEAVE | PDFLATEX | BIBTEX | PDFLATEX | PDFLATEX. Custom engine--Akasurak-16Nov2009'
#Updated 20Jul2010 for auto including Sweave.sty
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/texbin:/usr/local/bin
R CMD Sweave "$1"
R CMD pdflatex "${1%.*}"
bibtex "${1%.*}.aux"
R CMD pdflatex "${1%.*}"
R CMD pdflatex "${1%.*}"
after="$(date +%s)"
elapsed_seconds="$(expr $after - $before)"
date
echo Elapsed time '(m:s)': $(date -r $elapsed_seconds +%M:%S)
Can't say they are the best way of doing things, but they do work.
I use either Aquamacs or Eclipse to do the editing of the .Rnw file, then I use the following shell function to compile & view it:
sweaveCache () {
Rscript -e "library(cacheSweave); setCacheDir(getwd());
Sweave('$1.Rnw', driver = cacheSweaveDriver)" &&
pdflatex --shell-escape $1.tex &&
open $1.pdf
}
Notice that I'm using the cacheSweave driver, which helps avoid constantly re-executing code sections that take a long time to run.
BTW, I'm also trying to switch over to Babel instead of Sweave; not sure which I'll end up using more often, but there are definitely aspects of Babel that I like.
The best solution is here: you create a new *.engine for TeXShop to use, then typeset using the shortcut or the 1 button.
http://cameron.bracken.bz/sweave-for-texshop
Cameron is also very responsive, so I highly recommend his solution.
If you are open to switching to a (paid) solution, TextMate has a Sweave plugin that takes you from .Rnw to PDF in one step: Sweave, typeset, and view. Combined with Skim, which can be configured to reload PDFs, it makes tweaking files pretty easy.
I had this same issue (I use Mac OSX) and I opted to download Eclipse Classic 3.6.2. and then installed the StatET plugin. It's a bit hairy to get set up but once you do this environment is nice because you can one-click compile your .Rwn Sweave document using pdflatex and set options for your favorite viewer so the .pdf automatically pops up when you compile like it does in TeXShop. You can do this in TeXShop as well, but TeXShop is lousy for debugging .Rnw files and it doesn't highlight the R-code in the .Rwn file. In Eclipse you can customize the syntax highlighting (not the greatest from the Texclipse end, but ok) so that you can easily distinguish between your R and LaTeX code. You can also launch the R console from within Eclipse and it has a graphical object browser. Anyway, I could go on. If you want details about how to get it all installed, message me.
Guess I'm late to the party on this, but I put together a webpage that documents my Sweave workflow based on Eclipse (with one-touch sweave):
http://www.stanford.edu/~messing/ComputationalSocialScienceWorkflow.html

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