Aloha François, François Pinard <pin...@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
> Hi, Org people. > > A while ago, I started to get acquainted a bit with Babel, mainly as a > curiosity for an area of Org I did not know nor use yet. However, for a > couple of weeks now, I'm starting to better understand how useful the > combination of Babel and R may be in real situations. > > While documenting a few databases, exploring them with R mainly, I first > developed the habit of saving some of my R code aside, as a reminder to > myself for later retries or further discussions with colleagues. But > I'm finding out that it is much more fruitful to put the R code directly > in my documentation, taking advantage of Babel to insert the R output > and graphics right into it. It gets especially interesting because of R > sessions within Org, which may be used to cache prior computation > results, yielding comfortable interaction speed. Also, despite hundreds > of included graphics already, I do not feel any slowdown in Emacs yet. > > I think I'm going to just love it! :-) Thanks to all contributors! > > ------------------ > > There are tiny improvements or questions which I would like to discuss, > however. As this is all new and a bit overwhelming for me, I apologize > if my reports are a bit fuzzy, I guess dust should settle as days pass, > and would likely develop a clearer understanding with time. > > One thing is that I very often have to do "C-c C-x C-v C-c C-x C-v", > that is that I toggle in-lining of images out and in. It seems that > whenever I save the file, or use "C-c C-c" within an R Babel block, the > images stop being in-lined, while the in-line image flag is not reset. > Ideally, saving a file should not hide in-lined images. If, for some > technical reason, this is unavoidable, then at least, the in-line image > flag should always tell the truth, so "C-c C-x C-v" would be sufficient > to recall back the images. > > Real fun would be that any "C-c C-c" which triggers the re-computation > of an already displayed graphics, merely gets the displayed graphics to > get updated in place, without any more special interaction needed to > re-in-line it. > > Another point which gave me some fight to do is the disappearing of > column and row headers in non-graphical output. I only get the raw data > of the results. I found it quite annoying with R table() output, for > example, which are rather meaningless with no titles at all. Currently, > the only reasonable solution I have is to use ":results output org", > combined with an ascii() call on the R side, once ascii configured to > create Org style output (quite a nice feature, should I say!). Yet, it > would be all nicer and cleaner if none of this extra machinery was > required. Have you discovered :colnames and :rownames? These two header arguments might do what you want. All the best, Tom > > A very minor point is that, within a #+BEGIN_ORG / #+END_ORG block, I > sometimes see an extraneous space at the very beginning, before the > first "|". Sometimes I do not see it, and output is perfect. I'll try > to find some coincidence with other things, that would allow to > hypothesize a cause. Or else, to reproduce the problem with data which > is public enough that I could share it. > > I call it a day for now and get some sleep :-). > > With enough luck, will find some time to revisit this tomorrow. Yet > before leaving today, I wanted to say and share my enthusiasm for this > Org Babel / R combination, and also report the tiny problems above. > > Keep happy, all! > > François > > > > -- Thomas S. Dye http://www.tsdye.com
