[R] Tranferring R results to word prosessors

[Marc Schwartz (via MN)]

In follow up to Harold's thought of using LaTeX, I have an approach when
the use of nicely formatted tables is required in a document where LaTeX
is not being used for the entire document. In other words, where you
need to use Word, OO.org's Writer or similar application for the
majority of the document body.

This involves outputting R results to LaTeX table code in a text file,
processing the file with 'latex' and 'dvips' and creating an EPS file.
Of course, the LaTeX text file is fully complete with preamble, etc.

One can then import the EPS file to a page in the document processor
file. The most recent versions of the aforementioned applications will
generate a bitmapped preview of the table content to aid in placement
and review.

You can then print the document to a PS printer or file for subsequent
use. OO.org's Writer can also use Ghostscript to print to a PDF file
using a "PDF Converter" in the printer selection dialog. This,
importantly, is different than the "Export to PDF" function. The latter
does not properly print embedded EPS images and prints the bitmapped
preview instead.

The advantage of this approach is that you don't have to mess around in
the word processing program doing a 'text to table' conversion and then
go through the formatting of the resultant columns, borders, etc.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz

On Thu, 2006-02-09 at 09:47 -0500, Doran, Harold wrote:
> Well, I don't know if it can be used with Word or not, but you might
> consider Sweave for use with LaTeX. Maybe if you use the sink() command
> this might work, but I haven't tried it. 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Tom Backer
> Johnsen
> Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 9:41 AM
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: [R] Tranferring R results to word prosessors
> 
> I have just started looking at R, and are getting more and more
> irritated at myself for not having done that before.
> 
> However, one of the things I have not found in the documentation is some
> way of preparing output from R for convenient formatting into something
> like MS Word.  An example:  If you use summary(lm(....)) you get nice
> output.  However, if you try to paste that output into the word
> processor, all the text elements are separated by blanks, and that is
> not optimal for the creation of a table (in the word processing sense).
> 
> Is there an option to generate tab-separated output in R ? That would
> solve the problem.
> 
> Tom