[R] running texi2dvi without running bibtex

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 07/12/2011 6:47 AM, Aidan Corcoran wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I was hoping someone may know a way of running texi2dvi while ignoring
> bibtex errors, or any other work around (such as not running bibtex at
> all, if possible).
>
> The context is that I have an R program that does some calculations
> and writes a table into various folders, one per country for several
> countries. I have a latex file that takes the table as an input, and
> this latex file is copied into each folder. I would like to use R to
> compile the latex files, to avoid having to open and compile them
> individually. The files are simple one page files with no citations,
> so need no biblio.
>
> If I switch to one of the folders containing a table and a latex file and run
>    texi2dvi("onepager", pdf = TRUE, clean = FALSE, quiet = FALSE,
>           texi2dvi = getOption("texi2dvi"),
>           texinputs = NULL, index = TRUE)
> I get
>   running command '"C:\PROGRA~1\MIKTEX~1.9\miktex\bin\texi2dvi.exe"
> --pdf "onepager"  -I "C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-213~1.0/share/texmf/tex/latex"
> -I "C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-213~1.0/share/texmf/bibtex/bst"' had status 1
> and no pdf produced.
>
> I think the problem is that the absence of a biblio causes an error.
> The files compile in Texniccenter (with a warning on "no \citation
> commands" etc). Does anyone know of a trick to avoid this problem?
>
> Thanks very much for any help!

You might want to check the MikTeX documentation to see if there's an 
option to do that, but I couldn't spot one listed in "texi2dvi --help".  
So I'd suggest that you don't use the texi2dvi executable, just run 
pdflatex via

texi2dvi("onepager", texi2dvi="pdflatex", ...)

(or by setting the texi2dvi option) with the ... being appropriate other 
commands.  If that doesn't work, then write a batch or cmd file to do 
exactly what you want, and use system() to run it.

Duncan Murdoch