AuxiliarySoftware: Install R Commander Auxiliary Software
Description
Install Pandoc and LaTeX to increase the capabilities of the R Commander.Details
The capabilities of the R Commander can be enhanced by installing additional software.
The R Commander will work without this software but some features will not be activated.
The following addiitional software can conveniently be installed via the R Commander
Tools > Install auxiliary software menu. The resulting dialog box will take
you to websites where the software can be downloaded. This menu item will only be displayed
if one or more of these software packages are missing.
Here are the details:
- Pandoc: The Pandoc documentation-conversion software is used by the R Commander to
generate HTML (web), PDF, and Word files from the editable R Markdown document that is created by default during an R Commander
interactive session. Pandoc is required by thermarkdownpackage, which, along with theknitrpackage, performs these conversions.
In the absence of Pandoc, R Markdown documents in the R Commander are processed by the oldermarkdownpackage, which is capable only of producing HTML output. Pandoc is available fromhttp://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/installing.html.
On Windows systems, Pandoc installs into a non-standard location in your user directory,
typically
C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Pandoc\
, and then places this subdirectory
on your system path. You may have to reboot for the change to your path to take effect, and I
have found it necessary on two Windows 10 systems to re-run the Pandoc installer, first to uninstall
Pandoc, and then to re-install it before it would be work. - LaTeX: The LaTeX technical-typesetting system is required by the R Commander for
PDF output from R Markdown or knitr documents produced during interactive R Commander sessions. In the
absence of LaTeX, direct PDF output is unavailable. Complete LaTeX systems are available for the various
platforms that support R and the R Commander, including MikTeX fromhttp://miktex.org/downloadfor Windows systems;
MacTeX fromhttp://www.tug.org/mactex/for MacOSX;
and various sources (seehttp://latex-project.org/ftp.html) for Linux/Unix systems.