R help - Sep 2015 - Error: pandoc version 1.12.3 or higher is required and was not found

I am trying to use R Markdown, but call to render() gives me an error:
Error: pandoc version 1.12.3 or higher is required and was not found.

As I understand [http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/pandoc/] pandoc is a function
defined in knitr, which I have installed and it has pandoc() function
defined.

Looks like some version incompatibility issue, but I do not really know how
to resolve it.
Do I need to go to older R version to use it?

I would appreciate your help.

Best regards,
Ryszard
> sessionInfo()
R version 3.2.2 (2015-08-14)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
Running under: OS X 10.10.3 (Yosemite)
other attached packages: knitr_1.11
[...]

Ryszard Czerminski
508-358-6328
ryszard at czerminski.net
LinkedIn.com/in/Ryszard.Czerminski

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

> On Sep 23, 2015, at 6:13 AM, Ryszard Czermi?ski <ryszard at
czerminski.net> wrote:
> 
> I am trying to use R Markdown, but call to render() gives me an error:
> Error: pandoc version 1.12.3 or higher is required and was not found.
> 
> As I understand [http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/pandoc/] pandoc is a function
> defined in knitr, which I have installed and it has pandoc() function
> defined.
> 
> Looks like some version incompatibility issue, but I do not really know how
> to resolve it.
> Do I need to go to older R version to use it?
> 
> I would appreciate your help.
> 
> Best regards,
> Ryszard
> 
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.2.2 (2015-08-14)
> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
> Running under: OS X 10.10.3 (Yosemite)
> other attached packages: knitr_1.11
> [...]
> 
> Ryszard Czerminski
> 508-358-6328
> ryszard at czerminski.net
> LinkedIn.com/in/Ryszard.Czerminski

Did you actually install pandoc?

As per the page that you link to above:

"Please follow the instructions on the Pandoc website to install it."

The link in the above sentence is:

  http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/

Regards,

Marc Schwartz

On 23/09/2015 7:13 AM, Ryszard Czermi?ski wrote:
> I am trying to use R Markdown, but call to render() gives me an error:
> Error: pandoc version 1.12.3 or higher is required and was not found.
> 
> As I understand [http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/pandoc/] pandoc is a function
> defined in knitr, which I have installed and it has pandoc() function
> defined.
The error is talking about the non-R software package called pandoc,
which the pandoc() function makes use of.  Pandoc the package does the
heavy lifting, converting the Markdown into HTML, for example.

Duncan Murdoch
> 
> Looks like some version incompatibility issue, but I do not really know how
> to resolve it.
> Do I need to go to older R version to use it?
> 
> I would appreciate your help.
> 
> Best regards,
> Ryszard
> 
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.2.2 (2015-08-14)
> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
> Running under: OS X 10.10.3 (Yosemite)
> other attached packages: knitr_1.11
> [...]
> 
> Ryszard Czerminski
> 508-358-6328
> ryszard at czerminski.net
> LinkedIn.com/in/Ryszard.Czerminski
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>

On Sep 23, 2015, at 4:13 AM, Ryszard Czermi?ski wrote:
> I am trying to use R Markdown, but call to render() gives me an error:
> Error: pandoc version 1.12.3 or higher is required and was not found.
> 
> As I understand [http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/pandoc/] pandoc is a function
> defined in knitr, which I have installed and it has pandoc() function
> defined.
Pandoc ( to be distinguished from `pandoc()`) is an external-to-R software
hammer capable of creating items of special beauty when supplied with dross
text-materia.  `knitr` will be relying upon its availability when it casts its
magical spells. `knitr` on CRAN is currently at version 1.11.

The incantations needed to acquire your very own pandoc hammer are in the link
on that page entitled "Pandoc website".
> 
> Looks like some version incompatibility issue, but I do not really know how
> to resolve it.
> Do I need to go to older R version to use it?
> 
> I would appreciate your help.
> 
> Best regards,
> Ryszard
> 
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.2.2 (2015-08-14)
> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
> Running under: OS X 10.10.3 (Yosemite)
> other attached packages: knitr_1.11
> [...]
> 
> Ryszard Czerminski
> 508-358-6328
> ryszard at czerminski.net
> LinkedIn.com/in/Ryszard.Czerminski
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA

I guess the confusion here is the relationship between knitr::pandoc()
and rmarkdown::render(). The error message you saw was from
rmarkdown::render(), which requires Pandoc 1.12.3. The easiest way to
go to use rmarkdown (I mean the R package rmarkdown) is to use
RStudio, and you don't even need to install Pandoc separately. There
are a number of possible reasons for the failure you saw: 1) You
didn't install Pandoc; 2) You installed but didn't put it on PATH; 3)
You installed a lower version of Pandoc. I don't mean you should not
figure out the exact reason, but it just saves so much time not having
to take care of such technical details by yourself.

knitr::pandoc() is almost a completely different story. If you are
familiar with Pandoc command-line arguments, please feel free to use
it. If you don't want to waste time on remembering those arguments, go
for rmarkdown::render() instead, which has a much better interface to
Pandoc than knitr::pandoc(). As the author of knitr::pandoc(), I can
tell you this function was about two afternoon's work, and rmarkdown
has been under active development for almost two years now. Hopefully
that makes it clear enough for you to choose between knitr::pandoc()
and rmarkdown::render() :-)

Regards,
Yihui
--
Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com>
Web: http://yihui.name


On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 6:13 AM, Ryszard Czermi?ski
<ryszard at czerminski.net> wrote:
> I am trying to use R Markdown, but call to render() gives me an error:
> Error: pandoc version 1.12.3 or higher is required and was not found.
>
> As I understand [http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/pandoc/] pandoc is a function
> defined in knitr, which I have installed and it has pandoc() function
> defined.
>
> Looks like some version incompatibility issue, but I do not really know how
> to resolve it.
> Do I need to go to older R version to use it?
>
> I would appreciate your help.
>
> Best regards,
> Ryszard
>
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.2.2 (2015-08-14)
> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
> Running under: OS X 10.10.3 (Yosemite)
> other attached packages: knitr_1.11
> [...]
>
> Ryszard Czerminski
> 508-358-6328
> ryszard at czerminski.net
> LinkedIn.com/in/Ryszard.Czerminski