R bookdown: list of abbreviations with LaTeX nomenclature package - r

Generating an index in R bookdown works perfectly well.
Adding a list of abbreviations with the nomenclature package is more difficult:
I added to preamble.tex
\usepackage{nomenclature}
\makenomenclature
And then I include a file calling the \printnomenclature macro via the after_body include option in the yaml header.
Actually, I already have a pretty good idea, what the problem is:
Usually, one calls makeindex when generating the nomenclature list with LaTeX. This magically works for the index, but for the nomenclature package, there seems to be a need for some manual work.

Since RStudio does not know about special makeindex calls, you could install a tool like latexmk and configure RStudio to use that by putting Sys.setenv(RSTUDIO_PDFLATEX = "latexmk") somewhere in your main Rmd file, c.f.
Is there a way to add chapter bibliographies using bookdown?
[Not tested since you do not provide a minimal example.]

Related

Use R/exams exams2pdf() to produce a PDF document

I am new to the R/exams package and I try to produce a pdf document from one of the templates provided by the developers. (http://www.R-exams.org/templates/confint3/)
I am able to compile a Rnw file into a HTML document using the commands
library("exams")
exams2html("confint3.Rnw")
When calling the function
exams2pdf("confint3.Rnw")
it gives the error message
! LaTeX Error: File `Sweave.sty' not found.
I have Latex installed and there are no problems using it in general. I do not understand:
Do I need to tell exams2pdf() the location of the latex installation?
Do I need to define a template (as plain.tex) first? How should it look like?
What is it that I do not understand?
I looked at the documentation of the exams package, I also tried exams2pdf() after installing and calling library("tinytex").
Any help where to look at or what to do is highly appreciated. Thank you!
Minimal example:
install.packages("exams")
install.packages("tth")
library("exams")
set.seed(1090)
exams2html("confint3.Rnw")
set.seed(1090)
exams2pdf("confint3.Rnw")
It is hard to diagnose what exactly goes wrong with the information provided. In any case, when running pdfLaTeX either through utils::texi2dvi() (the default when the R package tinytex is not installed) or through tinytex::latexmk() (the default when the R package tinytex is installed) does not find the Sweave.sty file provided by the R base system. What is not clear to me which LaTeX engine is running in the background: MikTeX on Windows?
There are several strategies that could resolve this issue:
Tell your LaTeX installation about the texmf directory provided by the R base system so that it is found no matter where on your system you call pdfLaTeX.
Use a different LaTeX installation, e.g., by installing TinyTeX (the LaTeX distribution) through tinytex (the R package): tinytex::install_tinytex(). This might be particularly attractive if you are not actually a LaTeX user and just need it to compile PDF exams.
Avoid using the Sweave.sty file in a custom template file, say myplain.tex. A suggestion for such a file is included at the end of this post.
Further details are discussed in this thread: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/153193/latex-error-sweave-sty-not-found
As for your three questions:
As already explained above: exams2pdf() leverages either utils::texi2dvi() or tinytex::latexmk(). So these need to know about the LaTeX installation - but this seems to be the case. They just don't find the texmf provided by base R.
You should not have to do this but it is certainly an option that you can use. As a starting point, run exams_skeleton(markup = "latex", writer = "exams2pdf"). Among other things this creates a templates folder where you could put the myplain.tex template below.
As I said above, it's hard to answer that with the information provided. Hopefully, one of the clues provided here gets you a couple of steps forward.
Content of myplain.tex:
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{a4wide,graphicx,color,verbatim,url,fancyvrb,ae,amsmath,amssymb,booktabs,longtable,eurosym}
\newenvironment{question}{\item \textbf{Problem}\newline}{}
\newenvironment{solution}{\textbf{Solution}\newline}{}
\newenvironment{answerlist}{\renewcommand{\labelenumi}{(\alph{enumi})}\begin{enumerate}}{\end{enumerate}}
\providecommand{\tightlist}{\setlength{\itemsep}{0pt}\setlength{\parskip}{0pt}}
\setkeys{Gin}{keepaspectratio}
\DefineVerbatimEnvironment{Sinput}{Verbatim}{fontshape=sl}
\DefineVerbatimEnvironment{Soutput}{Verbatim}{}
\DefineVerbatimEnvironment{Scode}{Verbatim}{fontshape=sl}
\newenvironment{Schunk}{}{}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}
%% \exinput{exercises}
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

is it possible to compile R latex via knitr in a modula way

Is there any way to compile knitr subfiles separately? What I have in mind is something like the package subfiles for latex just in combination with R/knitr/Sweave?
This would be great in case one has two exercises a first exercise with heavy computations and
don't want to compile the entire exercise always while working and testing the second one.
The patchDVI package does this for Sweave. I imagine it would be possible (maybe even easy) to modify it to do the same for knitr.
For example, in Sweave, you define variables in a chunk like so:
<<>>=
.TexRoot <- "main.tex"
.SweaveFiles <- c("subfile1.Rnw", "subfile2.Rnw")
#
and after Sweave is finished running that file, patchDVI will check whether the files subfile1.Rnw and subfile2.Rnw also need to be run, then will run LaTeX on the main.tex file once everything is up to date.
You don't need to do anything difficult, just use the cache options. Lots of details here, but it's probably as simple as specifying cache = T in the chunk options of your first exercise.

Using a static (prebuilt) PDF vignette in R package

What is the proper way, to include a static PDF file as a "vignette" in a CRAN package as of R 3.0?
The trick described in this document of using an empty stub Rnw does not seem to work in R 3.0. The document suggests that there is now a better way based on \VignetteEngine{} but it's not quite clear how this works for static PDF files.
With R.rsp (>= 1.19.0) you can include a static PDF 'vignettes/main.pdf' by adding a tiny 'vignettes/main.pdf.asis' text file that contains:
%\VignetteIndexEntry{My amazing package}
%\VignetteEngine{R.rsp::asis}
and make sure to have:
Suggests: R.rsp
VignetteBuilder: R.rsp
in your package's DESCRIPTION file. This also works for static HTML vignettes. This is also explained in one of the R.rsp vignettes.
This works with a plain LaTeX trick as described in in this blog post.
I recently switched to doing this with the current R version (i.e. now 3.6.0), see this wrapper .Rnw file which contains just:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
%\VignetteIndexEntry{Using Annoy in C++}
%\VignetteKeywords{Rcpp, Annoy, R, Cpp, Approximate Nearest Neighbours}
%\VignettePackage{RcppAnnoy}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages=-, fitpaper=true]{UsingAnnoyInCpp.pdf}
\end{document}
The advantage is that this uses Sweave for a completely traditional vignette build, and imposes no additional dependencies whatsover.
UPDATE 2014-06-08: For a better solution to including static PDFs and HTML files in an R package, see my other answer in this thread on how to use R.rsp (>= 0.19.0) and its R.rsp::asis vignette engine.
All you need is a <name>.Rnw file with a name matching your static <name>.pdf file, e.g.
vignettes/
static.pdf
static.Rnw
where <name>.Rnw (here static.Rnw) is a minimal valid Sweave file, e.g.
%\VignetteIndexEntry{<title to be displayed on the R vignette index page>}
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\end{document}
This vignette source file (<name>.Rnw) tricks R CMD build to build it, i.e. R's tools::buildVignettes() will first Sweave <name>.Rnw into <name>.tex as usual. However, due to how buildVignettes() is designed it will detect our static <name>.pdf file as already being created by the Sweave engine and therefore it will not compile that dummy TeX file into a PDF file (which would overwrite our static file).
What is important to understand is that (i) vignettes are "build" during R CMD build, (ii) and when built they are copied over to the inst/doc/ directory (created if missing) of the built package. Also, (iii) the vignettes/ directory will not be part of the build package, i.e. <pkgname>_<version>.tar.gz file. So, make sure to look in inst/doc/.
So, to be clear here, using a dummy <name>.Rnw could be considered a hack that may break if someone decides to prevent against this strategy. However, if that happens, it is fully possible to create a non-Sweave vignette engine which sole purpose is to compile a <name>.pdf file into a ... <name>.pdf file. This is valid and possible due to the non-Sweave support added in R (>= 3.0.0). I've been considering adding such engine to the R.rsp package, e.g. \VignetteEngine{R.rsp::StaticPDF}. With that you would not even have to have that dummy Rnw file - only the PDF file.
Hope this helps

Compiling *.Rnw files with knitr --without Rstudio

I would like to use knitr to create presentations that embed R objects and code.
For IT reasons I am restricted to vim, so i have found the available Rstudio+knitr examples fairly unhelpful. The vim section of the knitr documents is also very skinny, and therefore unhelpful.
Is someone able to provide some guidance on how to compile a *.Rnw or *.Rmd file using knitr (or alternately point me to a decent online tutorial?) using some combination of vim, R, and the command line?
thanks in advance
Instead of going through Rstudio, you can use the functions in the knitr package directly. There are some options you can tweak, but to get started, all you have to do is call the knit() function on your .Rnw file:
library(knitr)
knit('my_input.Rnw')
If you're missing some of Rstudio's features, it's worth remembering that most of them are just making use of things that are already available in various R packages, so you can usually find a way to use them when you don't have Rstudio available.

R -- Vignettes that are not made by Sweave possible?

Can I include some PDF in the pkg/doc folder so that the vignette function works, but no corresponding Rnw, Rtex, etc exists?
I am thinking of slides or documents containing markdown text weaved with R chunks, which have a different build process and hence different file extensions.
The writing R extensions guide suggests that it should be possible to include documents which can not be build at installation time, but the vignette function seems to look for files with special extensions (Rnw, Rtex, etc) and also for a file called vignette.rds.
Any hints are appreciated.
I asked about this several years ago, and while Fritz Leisch is amenable to the idea, he hasn't had the time to implement it.
(Cross-posted from a response I just left on R-help:)
As a workaround, you could include your own xvignette function in your package: see below.
It won't show you indices, but it will pick up any appropriately named file that you include in the inst/doc directory of your
package ...
xvignette <- function(vname,pkg,ext="pdf") {
vname <- paste(vname,ext,sep=".")
fn <- system.file("doc",vname,package=pkg)
if (nchar(fn)==0) stop("file not found")
utils:::print.vignette(list(pdf=fn))
invisible(fn)
}
You'll have to somehow alert your package users to the fact that this alternative documentation exists -- perhaps in the help file for the package itself.
You might fill in the default value of pkg above with your package name to make it easier on the user: I thought about using some variant of getPackageName(environment(xvignette)) to do it automatically, but that seems too complicated ...
Brian Ripley also mentioned in his response to the question that:
At present vignette() means Sweave documents, as only they have
metadata like titles. This is planned to be changed soon.
... but I don't know what "soon" means (it will be about 6 months until 2.14.0 comes out, I think)
edit: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.devel/28449 details another workaround (creating a dummy vignette that incorporates the existing PDF file)
edit 2: And
here's what Yihui Xie has to say about including knitr-based vignettes in packages (essentially another "dummy vignette" strategy)
vignette about non-Sweave vignettes from the R.rsp package
This is supported natively as of R 3.0.0, see http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/vignette/.
Instructions to use knitr as vignette engine boil down to:
add %\VignetteEngine{knitr::knitr} to the Rnw source document (note you still need %\VignetteIndexEntry{} as before)
specify VignetteBuilder: knitr in the package DESCRIPTION file
add Suggests: knitr in DESCRIPTION if knitr is needed only for vignettes
See also the official R documentation on that topic.

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