R help - Oct 2012 - Fonts in *.Rd files.

I wanted to put a certain string in sans serif font in an *.Rd file
that I was writing.  I tried {\sf ...} and \textsf{...} but both resulted
in the warning "unknown macro".  The manual on "Writing R
Extensions"
seems to me to imply that one should be able to invoke such LaTeX
macros (section 2.3):
> Each of the above commands takes LaTeX-like input, so other macros may 
> be used within text. 
Is there something else I need to do to get this to work?  Or some other way
to get sans serif?

I would appreciate any pointers.

     cheers,

         Rolf Turner

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

On 12-10-11 6:05 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:
>
> I wanted to put a certain string in sans serif font in an *.Rd file
> that I was writing.  I tried {\sf ...} and \textsf{...} but both resulted
> in the warning "unknown macro".  The manual on "Writing R
Extensions"
> seems to me to imply that one should be able to invoke such LaTeX
> macros (section 2.3):
>
>> Each of the above commands takes LaTeX-like input, so other macros may
>> be used within text.
>
> Is there something else I need to do to get this to work?  Or some other
way
> to get sans serif?
>
> I would appreciate any pointers.
"LaTeX-like" refers to the way the parser works, it doesn't imply
that
all LaTeX macros are supported.

I think you have two ways to get what you want.  You can look through 
the available macros (listed in the Writing R Extensions manual, section 
2.3) for something.  Most of the macros describe the type of text, 
rather than the formatting. \code{} or \verb{} might be what you're after.

The other choice, which works only for LaTeX output, is to say you want 
some actual LaTeX macros.  These would only be output when producing a 
PDF of the help page.  Then you really do have all of LaTeX at your 
disposal.  Doing that is described in 2.11 on conditional text.

Duncan Murdoch