Integrating Obsidian and Rstudio workflow

This little Obsidian plugin called qmd as md Obsidian plugin. It enables Obsidian to recognize Quarto Markdown source file, which is the new generation of the widely used R Markdown format. As a result, now it is possible to index all the intermediate project source file and visualize their relationship. 

This can fundamentally change my research life. 

Visual R Markdown

 This new feature should be useful to students. 

Integrating Rstudio and Zotero

It is now possible to integrate Rstudio and Zotero seamlessly via the combination of the citr R package and the Better Bib(La)TeX for Zotero/Juris-M extension for Zotero. This means that there is no long a need to create a separate bibtex library for each project; instead, one can create and maintain one giant Zotero library (with many different subfolders maybe) for all projects. According to this post, it will soon be possible to work with Zotero group libraries (i.e., libraries other than the main "My Library").

01/08/2018 Correction: the group library functionality is already available in the github version of the citr package. Good work.

Rstudio tips

Very useful information.

RStudio IDE Easy Tricks You Might’ve Missed

I missed a few of the tricks mentioned here. Very neat indeed!

Interview with J.J. Allaire

Very informative interview here.

Setting Up New R Notebook

This is extremely cool!

Rstudio 0.99.878 becomes official

Rstudio 0.99.878 becomes official. There is server version in AUR that can be used. However, the pandoc that comes with that version seems to have problems on Arch/Manjora. The discussion here is very helpful. One easy solution is to replace the built-in pandoc with the one that comes with the system:

sudo mv /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/pandoc/pandoc /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/pandoc/pandoc_old
sudo mv /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/pandoc/pandoc-citeproc /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/pandoc/pandoc-citeproc_old

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/pandoc /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/pandoc/pandoc
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/pandoc-citeproc /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/pandoc/pandoc-citeproc

Launch Apache Spark on AWS EC2 and Initialize SparkR Using RStudio

Helpful information here.

Supercharge R with Spark: Getting Apache's SparkR Up and Running on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Very useful introduction here.

Introductory R Markdown: dynamic documents and reproducible research for beginners

Good tutorial here.

Spark 1.4 for RStudio

Finally, this is how to get it right.

Rstudio supports Chinese input

Not so long ago, Rstudio did not fully support Chinese characters. The server version seemed fine but the desktop version did not. Now, with the new official version of 0.99.441, the support for Chinese input is complete.

Play with C++ code in Rstudio

I am not a C++ programmer but sometimes I need to play with some C++ code. On my Linux workstation, I have the complete GNU tool chain installed. I don't really want to do that on my tiny Windows ultrabook because ... well, it's tiny and I want to keep it that way.

I do have R (and the magical Rcpp package), Rtools, and Rstudio installed on my ultrabook. I just realized how trivial it is to tweak C++ code fragments using these tools together.

For example, in order to run this very simple C++ code fragment:

===========================================
#include <iostream>
using std::cout;

int main() {
for (int hashNum = 1; hashNum <= 5; hashNum++) {
cout << "#";
}
cout << "\n";
return 0;
}
===========================================

One just need to add a few lines so that the code looks like this:

===========================================
#include <Rcpp.h>

using std::cout;
using namespace Rcpp;

// [[Rcpp::export]]
int main() {
  for (int hashNum = 1; hashNum <= 5; hashNum++) {
cout << "#";
}
cout << "\n";
return 0;
}

/*** R
main()
*/

===========================================

Hit Ctrl + Enter, problem solved!

Trouble publishing on rpubs and solution

On my Windows 7 machine, Rstudio reported an error message when I tried to publish my files on Rpubs. After some digging, I found the solutions here and here.

Rstudio, Markdown, and presentation

I recently discovered that using Markdown and Rstudio together can greatly simplify the kind of presentation I do for teaching and professional conference, that is, put computer code and the output side by side. Here is a simple demonstration.

Rstudio vs. StatET

Rstudio wins in easy installation, smaller size, and intuitive user interface. StatET wins in graphical debugger and an outline view. Right now, StatET is a better choice for Sweave/Knitr/LaTeX authoring platform than Rstudio.

Using Rcpp with Rstudio

It is quite amazing to see how easy and straightforward it has become to integrate C++ and R, with the help from Rcpp (especially with the new "attribute" function) and Rstudio. More information can be found here.

Knitr, Rstudio, and TikZ

I did not realize that this is such a powerful combination until today. It makes it possible to directly work on a Sweave file that has both text and code in the same document quite attractive (as opposed to begin an R program and a LaTeX file, then combine them together in the end).

R Markdown

The R Markdown that is integrated into Rstudio looks quite promising.