RStudio have announced R Notebooks. This adds an interactive execution model to R Markdown documents.
In R Markdown documents text and code can be mixed to create active documents that perform and update analyses as they are run.
However, R Markdown documents are executed in batch mode. This makes them more suitable for reporting than for teaching and investigation.
With the introduction of R Notebooks, code segments in the R Markdown document can be edited and executed in isolation—making the whole experience much more interactive.
R Notebooks can be saved as text (HTML) files allowing them to be shared via GitHub, for example. The HTML files can be viewed in a standard web browser as static documents. However, when the files are opened in RStudio, the R Notebook is automatically recreated from the HTML.
Support is also provided for languages other than R, including Python, C and SQL.
For more information, check out the development team’s YouTube video.
