Yihui Xie is a statistician and software developer best known for his work on R Markdown, knitr, and tools for reproducible research. He blogs about R, web technologies, publishing workflows, and practical programming techniques.
27 articles from this blog
Should I Ask for Sponsorship? Yihui Xie 2026-09-10 For two and a half years, from January 2024 to June 2026, Posit paid me as a contractor to maintain
A Review of rmarkdown Updates from 2024 to 2026 Yihui Xie 2026-09-09 Back in 2022, I promised that R Markdown wouldn’t die. In this post, I’ll give a
A Review of knitr Updates from 2024 to 2026 Yihui Xie 2026-09-09 It’s been a long while since I announced updates in knitr last time, so I’m writing t
Introduces the lt R package for creating lightweight HTML tables with minimal dependencies, inspired by gt.
Guide to converting testthat tests to the testit R package, a zero-dependency testing framework.
A long-time Stack Overflow member explains why he left the platform after 15 years due to gatekeeping and lack of empathy.
A developer reflects on using AI-assisted programming tools like GitHub Copilot to create a Rust-based R package, sharing insights and experiences.
Yihui Xie announces preliminary Typst support in knitr, enabling .Rtyp files to produce .typ or PDF output with R code chunks.
A tribute to R core member Tomas Kalibera, highlighting his contributions to R, including UTF-8 support on Windows and bug fixes.
Introduces tinyimg, an R package for compressing PNG images using bundled Rust crates, with lossless and lossy options.
Analysis of textConnection() slowness in R due to garbage collection from O(n^2) vector growth.
A blog post about setting up a CDN-backed partial CTAN mirror for TeX Live, now used by TinyTeX by default.
TinyTeX on macOS fix: no more sudo chown to /usr/local/bin, using /etc/paths.d instead.
A personal tribute to statistician John Fox, recalling his mentorship and impact on the R community through tools like Rcmdr and car.
A personal tribute to Fritz Leisch, creator of Sweave, reflecting on his impact on reproducible research and the R ecosystem.
A guide for R package maintainers on using a custom JavaScript tool to parse and organize lengthy CRAN reverse dependency check logs into manageable tabs.
Author Yihui Xie explains his decision to stop creating hex stickers for R packages, favoring minimal ASCII art instead to reduce visual clutter and package size.
Introduces xfun::tabset(), an R function for interactively exploring complex nested lists via hierarchical tabs, as an alternative to str().
Yihui Xie announces his departure from RStudio/Posit after 10+ years, discusses the layoff, and outlines the future maintenance of key R packages.
A technical guide on implementing the SearchBuilder extension for DataTables in server-side mode within the DT R package, with a call for community contributions.
