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rstudio / rmarkdown

Dynamic Documents for R
https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com
GNU General Public License v3.0
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[FR] an overleaf for rmarkdown #2273

Open albert-ying opened 2 years ago

albert-ying commented 2 years ago

R markdown is a perfect drop-in replacement for LaTeX. However, in real life, we usually need to collaborate with other people, including people who don't use R markdown.

For LaTeX, there is an online editor OverLeaf (like google Docs for LaTeX), which allows collaborative writing online. They also have a mode similar to the R markdown visual mode, which allows collaboration even with WYSIWYG users.

For R Markdown, there is currently nothing like overleaf yet. The Rstudio online is close to it, but there are some core functions missing: change tracking and comment system. And also, the interface is too complex for the non-programmers.

I'm wondering if it is possible for Rstudio to hold an online platform, that is specific to R markdown editing, which allows seamless collaborative editing with both markdown user and WYSIWYG users.

An alternative strategy is to use redoc, which allows bi-directional conversations between Microsoft Word and R markdown. However, it is currently suspended and unstable.

Thank you so much!

cderv commented 2 years ago

Thanks for the suggestion. We agree this is something that would be great and we'll probably consider this in the future. I'll pass along within RStudio teams as this is not only directed to the rmarkdown R package. Thanks for the feedback !

Maddocent commented 2 years ago

As a suggestion for a workflow that might suit your needs: When writing a manuscript together, in my group we use a repo on Github. Populate that repo with an RStudio project with all the neccessary files to reproduce the work and add an RMarkdown file as the manuscript. Setting up different branches for different authors could work to keep things clean. We adopt a one-commit-one-pull-request type of workflow for this. Adding comments using the 'code commenting' option in Github works well for us to add comments to the manuscript. Text edits can be tracked through the Github 'diff' on the manuscript file. And changes can be accepted (or rejected), using the pull request flow. Hope this adds anything useful. We have good experience with this complety open way of writing manuscripts.

tripartio commented 1 year ago

A colleague is trying to get us to use Overleaf for a new project. I would love to try to nudge the project to RMarkdown, but without Overleaf-style online collaboration, I don't have much of an argument.

Is there any progress on this request?

cderv commented 1 year ago

I believe if this would happen it would be with https://quarto.org/ which is Next generation R Markdown for broader usage that just R. This is definitely within the scope of the challenge we want to tackle, but not ETA yet.

Hopefully this helps.