Difference between R MarkDown and R NoteBook
I am trying to understand at a high level what the differences between R Markdown and R NoteBook. I know they are interrelated but I would like to figure out how they are related. My understanding is this:
I know R Notebooks are really R Markdown documents but I am confused about the terminologies.
RStudio new file option has both R Markdown and R NoteBook and selecting either of them opens an R Markdown file but with minor differences. So just trying to figure out why are there two options and what is the difference between the two?
I understand R Notebooks are newly introduced and R Markdown has been there for a while. Part of the confusion could be because I never used R Markdown before R Notebook was introduced so my related or more specific question is
What is R NoteBook doing differently than just using R MarkDown or what new capabilities is R NoteBook bringing?
All my hits on web search are pointing that R Notebook uses R Markdown but I did not find any help on what is specifically different between the two.
Answer
As far as I understand and from my setup there is no coding difference. The difference is in the rendering. The file extension is the same.
When you make a new R Notebook it adds html_notebook in the output option in the header. That's the difference. You can then preview the rendering quickly without having to knit it. It also refreshes the preview every time you save. However in that preview you don't have the code output (no figures, no tables..) (at least in my setup). Without html_notebook in the output there is no button preview
as you can see the Preview options shows up but you can also knit it in any format you want. It will add it to the header code when you do so.
However if you don't have that html_notebook in your header, you can only knit your code to see what it looks like (the entire book) (please ignore the additional default option I put in with the picture)
and the option to preview doesn't show in the drop down menu
Otherwise it works the same. For some default configuration the output is also hidden by default in the code section.
Note that you can mix several output options in your header so that you can keep the preview and keep your knit options for export.