Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 28/09/2026Very cute! This reminds me of my useR! 2014 talk at UCLA, in which I also showed Gromit (as a "knitter") in the beginning :) github.com/yihui/knitr-... 010
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 22/09/2026Thanks! I'm aware of that, but I used gh-pages deliberately so I can check diffs between builds. The size hasn't bothered me yet since I rarely pull this branch. If it becomes a problem one day, I can force push and delete older commits. 000
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 21/09/2026Oh, his only open issue is about "out of office": github.com/ropensci/tar... which will be closed on Sept 30th! I'll try to close mine on 29th!! 030
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 21/09/2026After a massive cleanup of knitr issues/PRs in the past few days, I can finally stop being jealousy of Will Landau for his zero open Github issues in {targets}: yihui.org/en/2026/09/k... For the record, he has one open issue at the moment and so do I (debating with myself whether I should close it).yihui.orgA Four-Day knitr Issue/PR Backlog Sprint - Yihui Xie | 谢益辉After knitr v1.52 went to CRAN on 2026-09-06, I did something I don’t do often but have been hoping to do: I sat down and worked through the GitHub issue tracker more or less top to bottom. Over... 2252
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 12/09/2026Yes, you can use it in Quarto, R Markdown, Shiny, litedown, and Jupyter. 020
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 11/09/2026working on R Markdown and knitr in 2026... - yihui.org/en/2026/09/r... - yihui.org/en/2026/09/k...yihui.orgA Review of **rmarkdown** Updates from 2024 to 2026 - Yihui Xie | 谢益辉Back in 2022, I promised that R Markdown wouldn’t die. In this post, I’ll give a summary of notable updates in rmarkdown v2.26–v2.32 (2024–2026). For the full changelog, please... 2308
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 07/09/2026I'm very glad that the dev version of knitr helps! Actually the new version just landed on CRAN this morning :) 130
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 06/09/2026Oh I didn't know arf allows this. Just tried it and you are completely right---I'm able to go back to the beginning of the expression even if I'm on a continuation line. Thanks for the tip! Good job, @eitsupi.bsky.social! You've got a new sponsor on Github now :) 120
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 06/09/2026I battled with the dark side of me for days on whether I should support .Last.value in knitr/litedown. Some may feel relieved that the dark side didn't win. 131
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 06/09/2026That's very cool. By "Sweave/knitr inserts R output", I'm curious if you have some Typst magic (extension) to call Sweave/knitr inside Typst, or you are using the minimal .Rtyp support in knitr? 110
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 06/09/2026To clarify, all consoles/terminals do allow scrolling; problem is that when you're on the 2nd line: > data |> + f() # press up arrow from here and scroll up, it'd become: > data |> + data |> which won't work. There's no way to do "give me all previous lines and I wanna start over" in console 100
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 05/09/2026When I finished typing f() and realized I needed to assign this to a variable, I'd have to do: > data |> + f() -> x Or just run the code and then x = .Last.value 021
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 05/09/2026Most of time I also write code in editor instead of console. Sometimes I just type some quick code that's not meant to be saved so I type in the console. I wonder which console allows you to scroll up when you are in the middle of an expression? > data |> + f() # can't scroll up here anymore 320
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 05/09/2026I rarely use <- (sorry I'm a team "=" member), but I have used -> several times over the years when I typed some long multiline code in the R console and realized I needed to assign the whole thing to a variable, and it was too late to go back to the beginning to type x <- ... but ... -> x is handy. 170
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 21/08/2026BTW, I absolutely love tinytable (and also tinyplot). It contains a lot more effort (to be a universal table generator). I was lazy and took the easy path :) 010
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 21/08/2026Thanks a lot for your feedback! You can export {lt} tables to PDF and PNG via browser: pkg.yihui.org/lt/examples/... so PDF is supported, and it's just that PDF is not created from LaTeX but HTML instead, which makes my life much easier since I wouldn't need to reinvent the whole thing in LaTeX.pkg.yihui.orgAn Introduction to lt 230
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 21/08/2026I just came back from summer vacation, and would like to announce a tiny new R package I developed recently: {lt} yihui.org/en/2026/07/l...yihui.orgThe lt Package: Lightweight HTML Tables for R (and Beyond) - Yihui Xie | 谢益辉Recently I have released a new package on CRAN: lt, short for lightweight tables (or less than). Its origin story is a small moment of shock. About two years ago a project required gt, so I ran &helli... 48023
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 21/08/2026Please help support Tomáš’s widow and young son. I was worried about them when I heard the sad news back in April, and I really appreciate that the R Foundation has set up this fund to help the family. 043
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 21/05/2026I just discovered TeX Live dropped support for Solaris from the automatic PR github.com/rstudio/tiny... today; with indescribable joy and uncertainty, I went to texlive-source repo and indeed I was not dreaming: github.com/TeX-Live/tex... as if they heard me in my post: yihui.org/en/2026/03/t...github.comremove (oracle) solaris binaries and builds · TeX-Live/texlive-source@0cdf2d8git-svn-id: svn://tug.org/texlive/trunk/Build/source@78957 c570f23f-e606-0410-a88d-b1316a301751 071
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 18/05/2026I've used testit quietly for testing R packages for ~13 years until John Blischak offered a few usability suggestions recently, which made me believe this tiny package is worth a v1.0 release. If you appreciate minimalism like me, you may enjoy life minus 22 dependencies: yihui.org/en/2026/05/t...yihui.orgConverting testthat Tests to testit - Yihui Xie | 谢益辉Back in 2013, I wrote about testing R packages when I first released testit. Thirteen years later, I still believe that unit testing should be nothing more than “tell me if something unexpected … 072
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 09/05/2026In the past I used to wait for the automatic hourly sync/update/build, which gave me chances to leave my computer until the new build is ready on r-universe. Now I no longer have excuses!! 171
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 09/05/2026I don't know why I just realized what the refresh button on r-universe.dev means and clicked it for the first time. I had wished for this for years, and it may have existed for years but I just didn't know it was triggering new builds! One of many reasons @jeroenooms.bsky.social is our hero ninja! 2251
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 09/05/2026I don't have much experience myself (only briefly tried some Ollama models on my iMac a couple of months ago and they were terrible but I imagine it was because I tried low-end models). I've heard good words about frame.work computers, and Gemma 4 models may be worth trying. 000
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 05/05/2026 One thing I still remember about AT&T Labs was that the building was a maze. It took me a long time to be able to navigate through. Perhaps it was deliberately designed for those top smart people :) 040
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 05/05/2026Oh, S, John Chambers, and Rick Becker... When I did internship at AT&T Labs in 2012, Rick's office was next to mine. It was fun talking to him from time to time and showing him my new toy for interactive graphics (cranvas). Happy birthday, S! Thanks to these pioneers! 1221
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 05/05/2026Looks like this will never change: yihui.org/en/2017/12/s... & yihui.org/en/2018/02/c... For our mental health, we should leave SO behind, and tell users to ask questions elsewhere. One former SO employee told me they had discussed my complaints in my posts back then, but I've never seen a change. 130
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 04/05/2026I just voted to undelete and it's back now; still closed and I also voted to re-open. This is the most frustrating thing about StackOverflow. Unfortunately there's nothing more we can do about it... 150
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 04/05/2026I've finally finished my writing, and am looking forward to yours! 000
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 30/04/2026Good question, and the answer is, unfortunately, no. For some reason, Microsoft decided to make `curl` an alias of `Invoke-WebRequest`, which is exactly the stupid cmdlet that wasted my time and hence I wanted to avoid. 010
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 30/04/2026Look at the stupid power(less)shell code: github.com/rstudio/tiny...github.comforget it; let's just use curl.exe · rstudio/tinytex@70c3cb7curl.exe ships with Windows 10 1803+ (April 2018) and Windows Server 2019+; anyone running a supported version of Windows should have it 120
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 30/04/2026I didn't know until today that curl.exe has been available on Windows for 8 years. Sigh. How much of my life has been wasted in fighting with those stupid download methods in .bat and power(???)shell scripts over these years! Anyway, TinyTeX users on Windows can enjoy a faster installation now. 1261
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 28/04/2026A new document format .Rtyp in knitr for Typst output: yihui.org/en/2026/04/k... (I also wrote down my thoughts on Typst since people keep asking me; I stand firmly on the HTML path but I'll be happy to continue supporting Typst and LaTeX, even though I don't use them myself)yihui.orgPreliminary Support for Typst in knitr - Yihui Xie | 谢益辉A few weeks ago I added preliminary support for Typst to knitr. The way it works is simple: if your file has the extension .Rtyp, knitr will recognize it as a Typst document, knit it, and produce a &h... 0111
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 27/04/2026Yes, I think so. I guess PNG is more widely known than WebP, though. BTW, WebP just gained support in knitr a few days ago: github.com/yihui/knitr/...github.comSupport agg_webp() using ragg >=1.5.0 by heavywatal · Pull Request #2434 · yihui/knitrWebP output has been supported by ragg since version 1.5.0. This PR enables knitr::opts_chunk$set(dev = "ragg_webp") for using it with knitr. 011
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 27/04/2026Oh yes, I simply cloned the repo and ran `R CMD build` on it. Didn't know that the CRAN version excluded vignettes (wise decision!). 010
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 27/04/2026I just ran `Rscript -e 'tinyimg::tinypng("tinyplot")'` and got this (the tarball size only decreased from 2.5M to 2.4M, though): 120
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 26/04/2026Yes, that's unfortunate, although I understand their point. For me, I ruthlessly trimmed every bit off of these crates (e.g. CI config files, docs, etc), e.g., for tinyimg itself, I was able to trim 5MB from the raw 31MB crates and the vendored .xz is about 2.1MB: github.com/yihui/tinyim...github.com 010
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 26/04/2026The size of all tarballs is about 16Gb. To make a meaningful comparison, I need to optimize PNGs in-place and rebuild the tarballs, which I didn't do (re-running R CMD build with vignettes can be tricky since I may need to install system deps). I guess PNGs should have low compression ratio, though.github.com 100
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 26/04/2026That 12Mb hex sticker is the winner (the single largest PNG among all R packages on CRAN). With enough memory, it can be optimized to a few hundred Kb (lossless). 141
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 26/04/2026All CRAN source packages (22749 tarballs as of today) contain 5.8Gb PNG images in total. Lossless compression via tinyimg::tinyping() can save 1.9Gb (32.0% savings), and lossy compression without noticeable differences can save 2.8Gb (48.2%): pkg.yihui.org/tinyimg/exam... (plot on the page is slow)pkg.yihui.orgPNG Savings in CRAN Packages 3386
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 24/04/2026PSA: The new standard for "lightweight" packages is that the package should be smaller than most hex sticker PNGs: yihui.org/en/2026/02/b...yihui.orgBye, Hex Stickers - Yihui Xie | 谢益辉As one small sign of moving towards minimalism, I decided not to make a hex sticker for the litedown package when I started writing it in 2024. To be precise, I didn’t want to make a sticker &he... 030
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 24/04/2026Out of curiosity, I wondered how much we can reduce the size of all PNGs in all CRAN packages via tinyimg. Interestingly, I ran out of memory (on GHA) in one package and it turned out it has a 12Mb hex sticker: github.com/cran/estar/b... 12M is more than enough for 2 base Alpine Linux Docker images!github.com 1141
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 24/04/2026Thank you! That's awesome! Have you already applied this trick to r-universe (wasm) packages? 100
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 20/04/2026I find it interesting and a little surprising that (occasionally) people still use github.com/yihui/latex-... to figure out missing LaTeX packages: yihui.org/en/2021/06/l... Obviously TinyTeX still hasn't won the world, which sounds like a major bug that I'm unable to fix. github.com/rstudio/tiny...github.comGitHub - yihui/latex-pass: Help you pass the LaTeX compilation by telling you which LaTeX packages are missing to compile your documentsHelp you pass the LaTeX compilation by telling you which LaTeX packages are missing to compile your documents - yihui/latex-pass 1102
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 20/04/202612 years ago I created crandalf at github.com/yihui/crandalf to check reverse dependencies of R packages on Travis CI and switched to GHA later. If your pkg has < 400 revdeps, you can do a simple edit in a .yaml file and submit a PR to let GHA do the hard work. More info: yihui.org/en/2021/06/c...github.comGitHub - yihui/crandalf: Check all reverse dependencies of your R package with Github ActionsCheck all reverse dependencies of your R package with Github Actions - yihui/crandalf 0121
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 16/04/2026You are welcome! If AI were this good in 2024, commonmark wouldn't have been a dep :) I'd certainly choose to torture AI with the C library directly, and litedown would have been 10x faster. Now I no longer have much time for this, unfortunately, but I'm quite happy with this fully handcrafted pkg. 010
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 16/04/2026Of course, it has existed since 2024: yihui.org/litedown/#se... See Figure 1 in the documentation to know more about the scope of litedown.yihui.orglitedown: R Markdown Reimagined 000
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 16/04/2026Thanks! It shouldn't be hard to generalize this idea to all litedown-generated pages, i.e., you can edit R code chunks on HTML pages and run them in browser. That was one of the most important reasons why I went the "lite" way without looking back. 000
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 15/04/2026In case you aren't aware, TinyTeX has started offering binaries for ARM and musl-based Linux since last month: yihui.org/en/2026/03/t... Enjoy the extra 5 minutes saved! BTW, I didn't know musl/Alpine Linux before. While working on TinyTeX binary for it, I was intrigued and also quite impressed.yihui.orgAnnouncing TinyTeX Binaries for arm64 and musl-based Linux - Yihui Xie | 谢益辉Three years ago, Cole Arendt requested pre-built TinyTeX binaries for ARM Linux. Today, I’m happy to announce that we now provide pre-built TinyTeX binaries for arm64 and musl-based Linux (e.g. ... 072
Yihui Xie @yihui.org · 15/04/2026Alternatively you can use the shell script to install it (which I'd recommend because the script is always up-to-date and not subject to the R package tinytex): yihui.org/tinytex/#ins... 2/2yihui.orgTinyTeX - Yihui Xie | 谢益辉TinyTeX is a custom LaTeX distribution based on TeX Live that is small in size, but functions well in most cases, especially for R users. If you run into the problem of missing LaTeX packages, it &hel... 010
