Hi Ken,

I'm also a big fan of the "active document" approach of org-babel that
enables interactive, rather than batch mode, report generation. However, I
am frustrated by some usability issues, in particular the need to specify
the ":results output graphics" and then a ":file foo.png". The need for
:file is particularly annoying when all one wants is for the image to be
embedded into the report file.

I'm also thinking that it would be convenient to produce multiple outputs,
instead of a single report. For example, select plots and tables might land
in a streamlined report for a collaborator. Or result objects might be
serialized into a data package for sharing with other analysts.

I'm very close to taking on an extension of babel's R backend to make it as
convenient as knitr but with the interactive features. It would also
support multiple outputs via a report generator abstraction that could be
implemented for arbitrary targets.

Michael

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 9:32 AM, Ken Williams
<Ken.Williams@windlogics.com>wrote:

>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ess-help-bounces@r-project.org [mailto:ess-help-bounces@r-
> > project.org] On Behalf Of Brett Presnell
> > Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2012 3:58 PM
> > To: ess-help@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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