Short Description
Write in RMarkdown, compile to PDF. Never deal with LaTeX dependencies.
Full Description
Manuscribble
A docker container prebuilt with pandoc, RStudio, and LaTeX for academic writing.
System Requirements
- Docker
- 4 GB hard drive space
1-step to both install and run
# Navigate to your manuscript directory
# The first time you run this, it'll download a ~4GB docker image
docker run \
--interactive \
--tty \
--rm \
-v $(pwd):/manuscript \
danielak/manuscribble:latest \
your_manuscript_name.Rmd # Replace with your Markdown file
That's it!
Why would I use this?
RStudio is absolutely fantastic and I think everyone should use it. BUT, when I write academic manuscripts, I tend to have the following needs:
- I need to cite lots of sources
- I do not want to deal with collaborators using or not having certain LaTeX dependencies.
Manuscribble
helps with both problems. Because it's an entirely portable R+LaTeX environment, you can use whatever text editor you want (I'm currently using Github Atom with the LaTeXer
package). And, because it contains a full LaTeX install, there's no chance you'll be missing some weird style file dependency.[^1]
[^1]: Unless your collaborators are using some sadistic homegrown style file, in which case: Donald Knuth help you.