RMarkdown / pandoc fails to knit Pdf with latex color commands

Question

• Mac Os: 10.11.6
• R version: 3.3.1
• MacTex: 2016 / TexLive: 6.2.2
• RMarkdown: 1.0.9014
• Knitr: 1.14
• Pandoc: 1.17

RMarkdown fails to knit PDF when latex commands such as:

\textcolor{blue}{Character String} 

are present in the .rmd file. The error output is:

/usr/local/bin/pandoc +RTS -K512m -RTS test.utf8.md --to latex --from markdown+autolink_bare_uris+ascii_identifiers+tex_math_single_backslash --output test.pdf --template ~/R/3.3/library/rmarkdown/rmd/latex/default-1.17.0.2.tex --highlight-style tango --latex-engine /Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex --variable graphics=yes --variable 'geometry:margin=1in' ! Undefined control sequence. l.105 \textcolor

pandoc: Error producing PDF

Error: pandoc document conversion failed with error 43

Execution halted

Inclusion of an r code chunk with echo = TRUE such as:

```{r, echo = TRUE}
# I am a glitch 
```

in the .rmd file allows for the successful creation of the PDF document.

If all r code chunks in the .rmd file are set with echo = FALSE or equivalent statements, the PDF file will not knit regardless of latex engine used if latex commands such as /textcolor are present. If only latex commands such as \begin{tabular}, many, etc… are used the error is not present.

Answer 1

Addition of “header-includes: \usepackage{color}” to the YAML header, as seen below, addresses the issue. However, it is unclear why insertion of an “echo = TRUE” R-code chunk also resolves the issue.

---
title: "test"
output: pdf_document
header-includes: \usepackage{color}
---

Interestingly, with a previous version of the R-Studio suite, as see below, inclusion of “header-includes: \usepackage{color}” in the YAML header, did not appear necessary prior to use of commands such as "\textcolor{blue}{Character String}" in the .rmd file.

• Mac OS: 10.10.5
• R Version: 3.2.2
• MacTex: 2014 / TexLive: 6.2.0
• Rmarkdown: 1.0
• Knitr: 1.13
• Pandoc: 1.13.1