R help - Feb 2015 - Getting Rmarkdown to generate custom LaTEX environment

Hi all,

I was struggling trying to make my Rmarkdown document to generate

\begin{figure*}

instead of

\begin{figure}

So that the figure spans on two columns (I'm using a custom template).

in my figure. I have read the Rmarkdown Reference Guide, and searched
for it on StackOverflow, and the general idea seems to be that I could
somehow pass the fig.env variable to the figure, but I have tried it
with no success: Something like this still doesn't have any effect
whatsoever on the latex code generated:

```{r test-plot, echo=FALSE, fig.cap = "Test
plot.\\label{fig:test-plot}", fig.env='figure*' }
options(fig.env='figure*')
plot(blah)
```

I know I must have missed something but couldn't figure out what I'm
missing after hours of struggling. Any help is much appreciated.

I have a smaller problem where I want to customize the [htbp] option
of the figure, and facing the same problem.

Cheers,
- Huan.






-- 

Eccentric Graduate Student
Google Talk/Jabber huant at tnhh.net - Website tnhh.net - Phone 1-858-848-ROFL

Dear Huan,

Markdown doesn't know the concept of figure*. So you can't generate it
with
native Markdown markup. If you really need figure*, then the only option in
markdown is to generate the LaTeX code yourself. Note that is will break
conversion to formats that don't handle LaTeX code.

Best regards,

ir. Thierry Onkelinx
Instituut voor natuur- en bosonderzoek / Research Institute for Nature and
Forest
team Biometrie & Kwaliteitszorg / team Biometrics & Quality Assurance
Kliniekstraat 25
1070 Anderlecht
Belgium

To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more
than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say
what the experiment died of. ~ Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher
The plural of anecdote is not data. ~ Roger Brinner
The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not
ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.
~ John Tukey

2015-02-25 3:28 GMT+01:00 Huan Truong <_ at tnhh.net>:
> Hi all,
>
> I was struggling trying to make my Rmarkdown document to generate
>
> \begin{figure*}
>
> instead of
>
> \begin{figure}
>
> So that the figure spans on two columns (I'm using a custom template).
>
> in my figure. I have read the Rmarkdown Reference Guide, and searched
> for it on StackOverflow, and the general idea seems to be that I could
> somehow pass the fig.env variable to the figure, but I have tried it
> with no success: Something like this still doesn't have any effect
> whatsoever on the latex code generated:
>
> ```{r test-plot, echo=FALSE, fig.cap = "Test
> plot.\\label{fig:test-plot}", fig.env='figure*' }
> options(fig.env='figure*')
> plot(blah)
> ```
>
> I know I must have missed something but couldn't figure out what
I'm
> missing after hours of struggling. Any help is much appreciated.
>
> I have a smaller problem where I want to customize the [htbp] option
> of the figure, and facing the same problem.
>
> Cheers,
> - Huan.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Eccentric Graduate Student
> Google Talk/Jabber huant at tnhh.net - Website tnhh.net - Phone
> 1-858-848-ROFL
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> 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.
>
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Hi Thierry,

Thanks for the quick and informative answer. I understand that
rmarkdown doesn't know the concept of figure*. However, I wonder why
it knows that I could pass fig.cap fine, but not fig.env? Where in the
code of rmarkdown does it take care of that fig.cap handling, so I can
patch it to make it understand fig.env?

- Huan.

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 3:39 AM, Thierry Onkelinx
<thierry.onkelinx at inbo.be> wrote:
> Dear Huan,
>
> Markdown doesn't know the concept of figure*. So you can't generate
it with
> native Markdown markup. If you really need figure*, then the only option in
> markdown is to generate the LaTeX code yourself. Note that is will break
> conversion to formats that don't handle LaTeX code.
>
> Best regards,
>
> ir. Thierry Onkelinx
> Instituut voor natuur- en bosonderzoek / Research Institute for Nature and
> Forest
> team Biometrie & Kwaliteitszorg / team Biometrics & Quality
Assurance
> Kliniekstraat 25
> 1070 Anderlecht
> Belgium
>
> To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more
than
> asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what
> the experiment died of. ~ Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher
> The plural of anecdote is not data. ~ Roger Brinner
> The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not
> ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.
> ~ John Tukey
>
> 2015-02-25 3:28 GMT+01:00 Huan Truong <_ at tnhh.net>:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I was struggling trying to make my Rmarkdown document to generate
>>
>> \begin{figure*}
>>
>> instead of
>>
>> \begin{figure}
>>
>> So that the figure spans on two columns (I'm using a custom
template).
>>
>> in my figure. I have read the Rmarkdown Reference Guide, and searched
>> for it on StackOverflow, and the general idea seems to be that I could
>> somehow pass the fig.env variable to the figure, but I have tried it
>> with no success: Something like this still doesn't have any effect
>> whatsoever on the latex code generated:
>>
>> ```{r test-plot, echo=FALSE, fig.cap = "Test
>> plot.\\label{fig:test-plot}", fig.env='figure*' }
>> options(fig.env='figure*')
>> plot(blah)
>> ```
>>
>> I know I must have missed something but couldn't figure out what
I'm
>> missing after hours of struggling. Any help is much appreciated.
>>
>> I have a smaller problem where I want to customize the [htbp] option
>> of the figure, and facing the same problem.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> - Huan.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Eccentric Graduate Student
>> Google Talk/Jabber huant at tnhh.net - Website tnhh.net - Phone
>> 1-858-848-ROFL
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>> 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.
>
>


-- 

Eccentric Graduate Student
Google Talk/Jabber huant at tnhh.net - Website tnhh.net - Phone 1-858-848-ROFL