Question

I’ve been using xtable package for a long time, and looking forward to writting my first package in R… so I reckon that if I have some “cool” idea that’s worth carying out, there’s a great chance that somebody got there before me… =)

I’m interested in functions/packages specialized for LaTeX table creation (through R, of course). I bumped on quantreg package which has latex.table function. Any suggestion for similar function(s)/package(s)?

P.S.
I’m thinking about building a webapp in which users can define their own presets/templates of tables, choose style, statistics, etc. It’s an early thought, though… =)

Answer 1

I sometimes divide the task of creating LaTeX tables into two parts:

1. I’ll write the table environment, caption, and tabular environment commands directly in my LaTeX document.
2. I’ll export just the body of the table from R using a custom function.

The R export part involves several steps:
Starting with a matrix of the whole table including any headings:

1. Add any LaTeX specific formatting to the table. E.g., enclose digits in dollar symbols to ensure that negative numbers display correctly.
2. Collapse rows into a single character value by replacing separate columns with the ampersand (&) and adding ends-of-row symbols “\\”
3. Add any horizontal lines to be displayed in the table. I use the booktabs LaTeX package.
4. Export the resulting character vector using the write function

The exported text file is then imported using the input command in LaTeX. I ensure that the file name corresponds to the table label.

I have used this approach in the context of writing journal articles.
In these cases, there are a lot of different types of tables (e.g., multi-page tables, landscape tables, tables requiring extended margins, tables requiring particular alignment, tables where I want to change the wording of the table title). In this setting, I’ve mostly found it easier to just export the data from R. In this way, the result is reproducible research, but it is easier to tweak aspects of table design in the LaTeX document. And in the context of journal articles, there are usually not too many tables and rather specific formatting requirements.

However, I imagine if I were producing large numbers of batch reports, I’d consider exporting more aspects directly from R.