[R] formatted output facilities ... was ..Oddity with internet access and R 11.0 - solved

[Greg Snow]

If you like the idea of ODFWeave, but don't want to trasition to open office then you may want to look at sword from the same group that brought us RExcel (http://rcom.univie.ac.at/download.html).  It looks like Sword is still in beta, but it plans to do the same for MSWord as ODFWeave does for OpenOffice.

Another alternative along the lines of what you are looking for is the R-Plus GUI by Xlsolutions corp.  You can see a short demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qsv1MdB4tk


-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of chrishold at psyctc.org
> Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2010 12:34 PM
> To: David Winsemius; r-help at r-project.org
> Cc: r-core at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] formatted output facilities ... was ..Oddity with
> internet access and R 11.0 - solved
> 
> David Winsemius sent the following  at 24/04/2010 18:24:
> >> Now that I'm here, courtesy of my time slip, what I'd really love to
> see
> >> in R 10.0.0, or even 2.12.0, is the choice to have output either in
> the
> >> current plain text or to some simple formatting primitives that
> would
> >> have default tabs & tables for matrices etc. and allow embedded
> >> graphics.  I'd love to be able to opt to save that as HTML, XML,
> TeX,
> >> RTF, ODF wihthout the complexities of Sweave, ODFWeave, R2HTML etc.
> >>
> >> I know the complexities of Sweave etc. are child's play to
> numerically
> >> and computer gifted people such as yourself Professor, and the R
> core
> >> team, but for those of us who proselytise for R to mere
> psychologists,
> >> doctors, psychotherapists etc., that complexity is hard and the
> hassles
> >> of reformatting text to nice tables etc. discourages people from
> coming
> >> across from SPSS I know.
> >
> > --
> >> require(xtable)
> > Loading required package: xtable
> >> ?xtable
> >
> > --
> > David (a mere doctor).
> 
> Not "mere" to me David.
> 
> Yes, I know xtable and use it a bit, well, quite a lot when I was
> writing R things for cgi use on the web.  I'm sure it's evolved (quick
> check suggests it has and great to see that aov, lm etc. are all
> covered).  However, it really does underline my point: you have to know
> it exists, you have to load it, then what you get on screen is either
> TeX or HTML formatted things and it doesn't embed graphics.  As I
> generally (boo hiss) have to get things to end up in Word documents it
> means I have to save to HTML and import from there.
> 
> I did also work a bit with ODFweave and really liked it but kept
> hitting
> problems and found the extra layer between me and debugging my very bad
> R coding meant that I didn't really make the leap from using ESS & R
> and
> raw output.  Not helped by work restrictions ensuring I couldn't really
> make the leap from Word to Open Office but the main problems were more
> of a feeling of more layers between me and R.  I've got used to ESS and
> love it but that leaves me stuck with these output reformatting
> challenges.
> 
> Xtable is wonderful and surely provides a lot of the functions that I'd
> love to see embedded into the R core.  If we get into my R tardis, and
> go to R 10.0.0, or could it only be R 2.13.0 say, those things would
> support an option to stream R output into lightly formatted form AND
> render and save that.  I'm looking for table handling such as xtable
> provides, tabs and embedding of graphics though if that last didn't
> come
> for years, I'd still be happy to have the text formatting and I'd love
> to be able to chose saving to at least a couple of ODF, RTF, HTML, Tex.
> 
> As well as the code in xtable, I'm sure other resources are in
> ODFweave,
> Sweave that would help this.  I know it's a significant programming
> challenge to do that, particularly in a program that so brilliantly
> embraces so many different platforms.
> 
> One of my guesses is that just allowing addition of tabs into the
> routine R output and encouraging us all to start using them, would be a
> huge step forward.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Chris
> 
> P.S. I'm cc'g to r-core as this is really a plea to the core team.
> Sorry if that's a breach of R etiquette.
> 
> --
> Chris Evans <chris at psyctc.org> Skype: chris-psyctc
> Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy, Notts. PDD network;
> Trust Research Governance Lead and Clinical Director, Psychological
>   Therapies Directorate in Local Services, Nottinghamshire NHS Trust;
> Professor, Psychotherapy, Nottingham University
> *If I am writing from one of those roles, it will be clear. Otherwise*
> *my views are my own and not representative of those institutions    *
> If you have difficulty Emailing me on this address or getting a reply,
> send again but cc to:       chris dot evans at nottshc dot nhs dot uk
> and to:                     c dot evans at nottingham dot ac dot uk
> 
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