TeachingDemos (version 2.3)

txtStart: Save a transcript of commands and/or output to a text file.

Description

These functions save a transcript of your commands and their output to a script file, possibly for later processing with the "enscript" program. They work as a combinations of sink and history with a couple extra bells and whistles.

Usage

txtStart(file, commands=TRUE, results=TRUE, append=FALSE, cmdfile,
          visible.only=TRUE)

txtStop()

txtComment(txt,cmdtxt)

txtSkip(expr)

etxtStart(dir = tempfile("etxt"), file = "transcript.txt",
           commands = TRUE, results = TRUE, append = FALSE,
           cmdbg = "white", cmdcol = "red", resbg = "white",
           rescol = "navy", combg = "cyan", comcol = "black",
           cmdfile, visible.only = TRUE)

etxtStop()

etxtComment(txt, cmdtxt)

etxtSkip(expr)

etxtPlot(file=paste(tempfile('plot',R2txt.vars$dir),'.eps',sep=''),
         width=4, height=4)

Arguments

dir

Directory to store transcript file and any graphics file in

file

Text file to save transcript in

commands

Logical, should the commands be echoed to the transcript file

results

Logical, should the results be saved in the transcript file

append

Logical, should we append to file or replace it

cmdbg

Background color for command lines in file

cmdcol

Color of text for command lines in file

resbg

Background color for results sections in file

rescol

Text color of results sections in file

combg

Background color for comments in file

comcol

Text color of comments in file

cmdfile

A filename to store commands such that it can be sourced or copied and pasted from

visible.only

Should non-printed output be included, not currently implemented.

txt

Text of a comment to be inserted into file

cmdtxt

Text of a comment to be inserted into cmdfile

expr

An expression to be executed without being included in file or cmdfile

width

Width of plot, passed to dev.copy2eps

height

Height of plot, passed to dev.copy2eps

Value

• Most of these commands do not return anything of use. The exceptions are: etxtStop returns the name of the transcript file (including the directory path). txtSkip and etxtSkip return the value of expr.

Details

These functions are used to create transcript/command files of your R session. There are 2 sets of functions, those starting with "txt" and those starting with "etxt". The "txt" functions create a plain text transcript while the "etxt" functions create a text file with extra escapes and commands so that it can be post processed with enscript (an external program) to create a postscript file and can include graphics as well. The postscript file can be converted to pdf or other format file. If results is TRUE and commands is FALSE then the result is similar to the results of sink. If commands is true as well then the results will show both the commands and results similar to the output on the screen. If both commands and results are FALSE then pretty much the only thing these functions will accomplish is to waste some computing time. If cmdfile is specified then an additional file is created with the commands used (similar to the history command), this file can be used with source or copied and pasted to the terminal. The Start functions specify the file/directory to create and start the transcript. The prompts are changed to remind you that the commands/results are being copied to the transcript. The Stop functions stop the recording and reset the prompts. The R parser strips comments and does some reformating so the transcript file may not match exactly with the terminal output. Use the txtComment or etxtComment functions to add a comment. This will show up as a line offset by whitespace in the transcript file and highlighted in the etxt version. If cmdtxt is specified then that line will be inserted into cmdfile preceeded by a # so it will be skipped if sourced or copied. The tktSkip and etxtSkip functions will run the code in expr but will not include the commands or results in the transcript file (this can be used for side computations, or requests for help, etc.). The etxtPlot function calls dev.copy2eps to create a copy of the current plot and iserts the proper command into the transcript file so that the eps file will be included in the final postscript file after processing.

See Also

sink, history, Sweave, the odfWeave package, the R2HTML package

Examples

etxtStart()
etxtComment('This is todays transcript')
date()
x <- rnorm(25)
summary(x)
stem(x)
etxtSkip{?hist}
hist(x)
etxtPlot()
Sys.Date()
Sys.time()
my.file <- etxtStop()

# assumes enscript and ps2pdf are on your path
system(paste('enscript -e -B -p transcript.ps ', my.file) )
system('ps2pdf transcript.ps')