[ESS] knitr

[Ken Williams]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ess-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:ess-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Brett Presnell
> Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2012 3:58 PM
> To: ess-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [ESS] knitr
>
>
> A comment, for whatever it's worth.
>
> I have a lot more experience with AUCTeX and ESS than with org-mode, but
> org-mode has at least one feature that I think is a big improvement over
> editing Rnw files with AUCTeX + ESS + noweb + whatever-else-is-involved.

There's another quite major difference between org-mode and KnitR that I don't see mentioned very often.  In org-mode, the chunks are executed (either on-demand or in bulk, like in KnitR) and then the output is reinserted right back into the file.  So while you're editing the file, you can see all the parts that will make up the final output.  The rendering from text to HTML (or to other formats) is then just a matter of formatting all the content into the proper format, it doesn't (necessarily) run any of the code chunks.

This also means that the text version of the file can serve as a complete version of the document, without needing to be re-executed again in the future.  A little bit like caching, but much more straightforward.

This workflow is probably the big thing that keeps me with org-mode rather than its various competitors.

 -Ken

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