Replying to Chris's latest message for the sake of preserving the thread, but deleting all of it to save space. Except:
I had sympathy with Chris's original query, on the grounds that it was a good enquiry in principle, essentially pokinting towards the problem of incorporating R's formatted output (be it tables, graphics, ... ) into document-preparation software, whether it be noddy WYSIWYG like Word, or more sophisticated "typesetting" software such as TeX, the Adobe stable and other DTP software, or even the ancient UNIX troff dinosaur (re-evolved as GNU groff,but stil roaming the plains and consuming tough typesetting for breakfast just as its ancestor did). Given what he said in his latest message, I now have even more sympathy. It's not about begging in the streets for someone to charitably do the job for him! It's a job that could be a service to many, and if it attracts enough enthusiasm from enough of those who know how to do it then they will willingly plunge in. That's how Free Software works. The issue is about the "enough enthusiasm" and the "enough of those who know". Many (possibly almost all) of the people who have developed R are mainly working with TeX/LaTex. R clearly has a well-developed interface to that language. But there are many people (of whom Chris has raised his head) who have needs or preferences for other software of whom some (as Chris spelled out) may totally lack support for R and LaTex, etc., from their organisations. I've pondered such issues many times myself, being one of the old nomadic troff-herders and still herding the groffs. My routine approach is as Chris described: grab the output from R (be it mouse-copied off-screen, from a saved file, or for graphics from a file of the coordinates of the graphical objects, or an EPS file), plant this into a groff document, and wrap it in formatting tags so that it comes out nicely. A bit time consuming, but since it's fairly straightforward in a markup language like g/troff, not so very time-consuming; and I dare say the same would be true for TeX/LaTex if Sweave & Co did not exist. However, I would hate to have to do it for Word and the like! I bet that *is* time consuming. All of which is leading on to a suggestion that has been lurking in my mind for a while. How about an R "device" called xml? This would implement the XML "extensible markup language" which is basically capable of encapsulating any formatted material. The existing R devices seem to be confined to graphical output. XML can in principle cope with anything. Naturally, its function would be to save to file, not display on screen. I believe that Word (and maybe other MS Office software) can import XML. I know that XML can be converted to g/troff input (I've done it). It can no doubt be converted to TeX/LateX input. I'm not familiar enough with other document software to comment Then we would have a "universal" language for formatted R output, suitable for importing formatted R output into document preparation software. One would not need the full functionality of XML. Up to a point (I'm far from being an XML guru) I'd be prepared to assist with this, and in particular to test it out with groff. Any comments? Might there be a better suggestion than XML? Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 06-May-10 Time: 21:07:34 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
