On 05.07.2008, at 23:42, Sean Anderson wrote:

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... my idea was to combine LaTeX and Rdaemon. I wrote a new Language for LaTeX called "LaTeX Rdaemon". ...

Are there any comments about my approach? What kind of side-effects could be expected?

First of all, this approach won't replace Sweave. Sweaving means that the R code will be executed "while" typesetting. The 'LaTeX Rdaemon' language approach will execute the R code if you press RETURN, meaning the typesetting process won't run any R code. This approach 'only' simplifies some issues.

Up to now I have the following workflow.

I have a tex document. If I invoke the snippet 'rdenv' a new LaTeX environment \begin{Rdaemon} will be included and a new Rdaemon session will be started. The Rdaemon start process will look for a Rdata image in the same folder as the tex document is saved and if there is one it will be loaded (the same for the history). Then I have a snippet 'rd' which includes that Rdaemon environment (that environment is based on verbatimtab). I can execute some R code. The result will be written into the tex document.

I suppose you'd also have to break out of verbatim to print the figure.

If I plot something like 'plot(1:10)' I see that plot in the quartz window. Here I have a command which saves the active R device as PDF into the text document folder (without closing the active quartz window). If you have the tex document open in a TM project showing that folder you will see the new created PDF in the drawer. Then you can drag'n'drop that PDF into the the tex document to insert it via \begin{figure} etc. If I save a tex document the current R workspace will also be saved via save.image.

I'm wondering what the best way would be to deal with tabular output? Would you want to break out of verbatim and put it in a tabular environment or just leave it as is?

This is a good question. My first idea is that I type the name of a variable containing that table and then I invoke a command à la 'Insert as TeX table'. This command will take the variable name and will use e.g. xtable::print to insert a TeX table.

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Would this be useful at all?

Definitely - I'd be keen to experiment with it when you're ready!

Please be patient. There are hundreds of tiny things to ... ;)

--Hans