Students in the Johns Hopkins University Data Science Specialization often struggle with installing the software that is necessary to generate documents in the Adobe PDF format as required for the two course projects.
One can create a PDF suitable for submission for the course project in three different ways, including:
- Generate an HTML document with knitr, and then use a PDF printing tool like the Windows 10 built-in "Microsoft Print to PDF" printer driver or CutePDF to print the HTML document as a PDF,
- Generate a Microsoft Word document with knitr, and save the Word document as a PDF using Word 2016+ or print the Word document as a PDF using Word 2013+ PDF print driver, or
- Install a version of LaTeX that is appropriate for your operating system, and use knitr to directly generate PDF files.
For the purposes of this article, we will focus on alternative 3, specifically for the Windows 10 operating system.
If a person tries to knit an R markdown document to PDF without a version of TeX installed on the machine, knitr generates the following error:
Step 1: Download the Complete MiKTeX
Navigate to the MiKTeX download page. The page shows the Recommended Download for the basic version. Do not download this version. Instead, expand the Other Downloads section, and choose the net install. Choose the 32-bit version if your computer runs the 32-bit version of Windows, and the 64-bit version if it runs the 64-bit version of Windows.
The browser will prompt for a directory in which to save the file. Navigate to the desired directory in the Save As dialog box, and save the file.
Once the file is downloaded, run the setup program, and it will display a Copying Conditions Agreement dialog box.
Read the Copying Conditions agreement, click the checkbox in the lower left corner of the dialog box, and press the <Next> button.
The installer program will ask you to select a radio button to either download or install MiKTeX. Select the download radio button and then press the Next button.
On the next dialog box, select the Complete radio button, and then the Next button.
The next dialog box allows you to select a mirror site from which the software will be downloaded. Select an FTP or HTTP download site near you, and press the Next button.
The next dialog box asks you to select a folder into which the MiKTeX software will be downloaded. Use the Browse button to open a File Manager window to navigate to the desired directory, and then press the Next button.
Finally, the installer displays a review dialog box. Check to see that the file destination is accurate, then press the Next button.
At this point, the installer begins downloading the application from the source mirror, and the next step is to wait, quite a while, because the download is about 200Mb.
...and here we are, 30 minutes into the download process. As noted above, the download takes a long time!
When the download completes, the download dialog enables the Next button. In my case, it took 1 hour 42 minutes, on an internet connection with 90mbps download speed.
Press the Next button to complete the installation.
At this point in the process, the final dialog appears.
Restart the installation software from the location where you downloaded it. As it did on for the download process, the installer displays the Copying Conditions Agreement. Select the checkbox and then press the Next button to continue.
Select the radio button for the complete install, and then press the next button.
Next, the installer asks whether MiKTeX should be accessible by all users or the current user on the machine where the installation is taking place. Select the all users radio button, and then press the Next button.
Next, the installer allows you to specify a directory to which the MiKTeX software will be installed. If you want to install in a directory other than the default, either type the directory name in the text window, or select the Browse button to use File Manager to select a directory. Then press the Next button to continue.
The next dialog allows you to set a preferred paper size, and to install missing packages. Select Letter and Yesand then press Next.
The installer displays a summary dialog so you can review your selections. If you're satisfied with the entries you've made, press Next to start the installation. Otherwise press the Back button to return to the dialog whose values you want to change.
The install process begins, and note that it will install over 113,000 files.
Once the install process completes, press the Next button to continue.
The installer displays the final dialog box indicating that the installation has completed. On my machine (Intel i7 processor, solid state disk), the install process took about 30 minutes.
Press the Close button to end the installation process.
Restart RStudio, and knit an R markdown document to confirm that MiKTeX allows knitr to generate a PDF.
...and the output from knitr.
After a lot of time downloading code and watching the disk spin through the installation of MiKTeX on the local disk, we're now able to knit to PDF.
Have fun with your analyses!