Sweave (was RE: [R] how to present a table in powerpoint?)

[Achim Zeileis]

On Tuesday 29 April 2003 21:06, Ko-Kang Kevin Wang wrote:

> On Tue, 29 Apr 2003, Thomas W Blackwell wrote:
> > Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 09:10:36 -0400 (EDT)
> > From: Thomas W Blackwell <tblackw at umich.edu>
> > To: Marc Schwartz <mschwartz at medanalytics.com>
> > Cc: kwan022 at stat.auckland.ac.nz, jonathan_li at agilent.com,
> >      r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> > Subject: RE: [R] how to present a table in powerpoint?
> >
> > I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned "Sweave".
> > I've never used it, but it seems to solve exactly the
> > general problem of R-to-postscript formatting that
> > Jonathan Li sees a use for.  However, it works via
> > TeX/LaTeX rather than by commercial software.
> >
> > http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~leisch/Sweave/Sweave-manual-20021007.p
> >df
>
> When I do my presentations I always produce PDF plots from R, insert
> into a LaTeX document which uses pdfscreen package, convert to pdf
> via pdflatex.
>
> I've heard of Sweave but am not aware its abilities.  Has anyone
> used it? What is it like?

Yes, a lot of people already have used it and for a lot of us mixing 
R/S code and LaTeX documentation was exactly what we always wanted.
 
There have been several discussions about Sweave on the list, so you 
could browse the archives to look for further opinions. And look on 
Fritz' web page (already indicated above) for documentation of the 
features of Sweave.

What hasn't been mentioned explicitely on R-help (as it is very 
obvious, I suppose) is that you can not only generate reproducible 
reports using Sweave but also pdf slides for presentations. This is 
very convenient if you need to change some of your graphics (greater 
line width, different colors, etc.) to be properly seen on the 
projector at some conference, say. You just change the R code in the 
Sweave file and recompile.

Best,
Z

> (Sorry if this is a bit off-topic...)