[R] Hadley's book: paper/PDF/etc. versus github

[Amos B. Elberg]

For me, it output html from rstudio complete with code etc., with no changes except a tinker to a call to setwd(), downloading some libraries, and no other intervention.  I haven't explored the rmarkdown capabilities before, and I was just amazed. 


> On Oct 6, 2014, at 1:28 PM, Greg Snow <538280 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hadley, have you tried producing the book in other electronic formats
> (other than pdf)? such as epub?  I tried and ended up with a file that
> worked, but all the example code was missing (which defeats the
> convenience of having it on an ebook reader), I did not check if
> everything else was there or not.
> 
> thanks,
> 
> On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 6:37 AM, Hadley Wickham <h.wickham at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi, folks.  I've got a sort of coupon that would allow me to get a
>>> copy of "Advanced R" by Hadley Wickham at no cost.  OTOH, I've already
>>> cloned the github repository, and having the "live" Rmd files (or in
>>> this case, rmd files) is enormously more useful to me than having any
>>> form of electronic or paper format.
>> 
>> I presume you mean https://github.com/hadley/adv-r (no need to be
>> secretive about it ;)
>> 
>>> The only reason I can think of for getting, say, a PDF version of the
>>> book is that corrected versions of such books are sometimes (always?)
>>> made available for free if you've already got the PDF version of the
>>> book.  (I know O'Reilly does this.)
>> 
>> The pdf version of the book is made from the files in that repo, so I
>> don't see any advantage there.  (You can build the pdf yourself if you
>> spend a few minutes looking for the right file ;)
>> 
>>> But if the github version is going to continue to exist, be updated,
>>> and be generally available, that's even better.  IS it going to exist,
>>> be updated, and be generally available?  Any thoughts?
>> 
>> The github version _is_ the authoritative version of the book (and in
>> some sense it's already slightly better than the book, since a number
>> of minor typos have been fixed since the book was published). C&H is
>> mostly print on demand, so later printings of the book are likely to
>> pick up the improvements, although there is still some additional
>> human checking in the process, so it'll only get updated every 6
>> months or so.
>> 
>> The repo and http://adv-r.had.co.nz will continue to exist for the
>> foreseeable future.
>> 
>> Hadley
>> 
>> --
>> http://had.co.nz/
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
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>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
> 538280 at gmail.com
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.