Configure Texmaker to use Knitr in Linux

This was tested in Ubuntu, but should work with various other OSs.

1. Install knitr

2. Open Texmaker

3. User -> User Commands -> Edit User Commands

4. Menu item

   • knitr

5. Command

   Rscript -e "knitr::knit('%.Rnw')"|pdflatex -synctex=1 -interaction=nonstopmode %.tex|evince %.pdf
   

Note how the commands are seperated by |. First, the knit function is run on the .Rnw file, then pdflatex compiles the .tex file into a PDF, and finally the PDF is opened with Evince. You can add and subtract commands by cutting and pasting or using the ‘wizard’ button. For example, if you were creating a more substantial document with citations (running Biber as the backend for BibLaTeX instead of BibTeX)

Rscript -e "knitr::knit('%.Rnw')"|pdflatex -synctex=1 -interaction=nonstopmode %.tex|biber %.bcf|pdflatex -synctex=1 -interaction=nonstopmode %.tex

Using the knit function instead of the knit2pdf function was intentional. The knit2pdf function depends on texi2pdf and it’s just cleaner to call pdflatex manually.