Frank
On 05/06/2010 03:07 PM, (Ted Harding) wrote:
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.
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