Re: [O] Discovering Babel and R combination!

[Thomas S. Dye]

Aloha François,

François Pinard <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi, Org people.
>
> A while ago, I started to get acquainted a bit with Babel, mainly as a
> curiosity for an area of Org I did not know nor use yet.  However, for a
> couple of weeks now, I'm starting to better understand how useful the
> combination of Babel and R may be in real situations.
>
> While documenting a few databases, exploring them with R mainly, I first
> developed the habit of saving some of my R code aside, as a reminder to
> myself for later retries or further discussions with colleagues.  But
> I'm finding out that it is much more fruitful to put the R code directly
> in my documentation, taking advantage of Babel to insert the R output
> and graphics right into it.  It gets especially interesting because of R
> sessions within Org, which may be used to cache prior computation
> results, yielding comfortable interaction speed.  Also, despite hundreds
> of included graphics already, I do not feel any slowdown in Emacs yet.
>
> I think I'm going to just love it! :-)  Thanks to all contributors!
>
> ------------------
>
> There are tiny improvements or questions which I would like to discuss,
> however.  As this is all new and a bit overwhelming for me, I apologize
> if my reports are a bit fuzzy, I guess dust should settle as days pass,
> and would likely develop a clearer understanding with time.
>
> One thing is that I very often have to do "C-c C-x C-v C-c C-x C-v",
> that is that I toggle in-lining of images out and in.  It seems that
> whenever I save the file, or use "C-c C-c" within an R Babel block, the
> images stop being in-lined, while the in-line image flag is not reset.
> Ideally, saving a file should not hide in-lined images.  If, for some
> technical reason, this is unavoidable, then at least, the in-line image
> flag should always tell the truth, so "C-c C-x C-v" would be sufficient
> to recall back the images.
>
> Real fun would be that any "C-c C-c" which triggers the re-computation
> of an already displayed graphics, merely gets the displayed graphics to
> get updated in place, without any more special interaction needed to
> re-in-line it.
>
> Another point which gave me some fight to do is the disappearing of
> column and row headers in non-graphical output.  I only get the raw data
> of the results.  I found it quite annoying with R table() output, for
> example, which are rather meaningless with no titles at all.  Currently,
> the only reasonable solution I have is to use ":results output org",
> combined with an ascii() call on the R side, once ascii configured to
> create Org style output (quite a nice feature, should I say!).  Yet, it
> would be all nicer and cleaner if none of this extra machinery was
> required.

Have you discovered :colnames and :rownames?  These two header arguments
might do what you want.

All the best,
Tom

>
> A very minor point is that, within a #+BEGIN_ORG / #+END_ORG block, I
> sometimes see an extraneous space at the very beginning, before the
> first "|".  Sometimes I do not see it, and output is perfect.  I'll try
> to find some coincidence with other things, that would allow to
> hypothesize a cause.  Or else, to reproduce the problem with data which
> is public enough that I could share it.
>
> I call it a day for now and get some sleep :-).
>
> With enough luck, will find some time to revisit this tomorrow.  Yet
> before leaving today, I wanted to say and share my enthusiasm for this
> Org Babel / R combination, and also report the tiny problems above.
>
> Keep happy, all!
>
> François
>
>
>
>

-- 
Thomas S. Dye
http://www.tsdye.com