Enabling LaTeX shell escape in RMarkdown

Question

I'm working on an RMarkdown document that I want to compile with xelatex using the shell escape option. The RStudio documents describe how this can be done for *.tex documents but the Enable shell escape command option does not appear to affect the compilation of Markdown documents.

Here's my YAML header. Is there a way I can pass the --enable-write18 option to the LaTeX engine by specifying it in the YAML?

---
title: "My document"
author: "Me"
date: "2016-01-01"
documentclass: report
output:
  pdf_document:
    latex_engine: xelatex
    number_sections: yes
    template: ard-pandoc-template.tex
    toc: yes
---

# Test

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Does this answer your question? [Latex shell-escape options in YAML header don't use](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55459948/latex-shell-escape-options-in-yaml-header-dont-use) — robertspierre, Apr 22 '23 at 15:39

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 10 '17 at 09:42

3

Found the answer on another RStudio page. There's an option to pass additional arguments to Pandoc from the YAML header:

output:
  pdf_document:
    latex_engine: xelatex
    pandoc_args: "--latex-engine-opt=--enable-write18"

answered May 10 '17 at 09:42

jkeirstead

2,881
3
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--latex-engine-opt has been removed. Use --pdf-engine-opt instead. – robertspierre Apr 22 '23 at 12:44
Also link to docs is dead. New link is [this](https://bookdown.org/yihui/rmarkdown/html-document.html#pandoc-arguments). – robertspierre Apr 22 '23 at 12:49
Actually this solution won't work anymore. See my answer below. – robertspierre Apr 22 '23 at 15:40

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 22 '23 at 15:42

The solution provided by OP doesn't work anymore.

To have pdflatex called with -shell-escape in a RMarkdown document, put the following inside the document:

```{r, include=FALSE}
options(tinytex.engine_args = '-shell-escape')
```

The LaTeX engine is called by tinytex::latexmk() instead of Pandoc, so the Pandoc argument --pdf-engine-opt won't work.

Source (and credit) here.

Enabling LaTeX shell escape in RMarkdown

2 Answers2