Thanks, I am aware that there is a terminal tab in RStudio. The difference is that with an RMarkdown document, it becomes a highly stylized and interactive HTML document. learnr provides a feature to enable an interactive R shell within that document, which is amazing. This topic is to confirm that the only way to use a bash terminal is indeed via the RStudio IDE and not a compiled RMarkdown document.
My use case: A built RMarkdown document is great for teaching. The inclusion of an interactive shell to reinforce the content around the shell is even better. It's not the end of the world to leave the RMarkdown document to go to the terminal in RStudio, but now I am switching contexts.
The comparison is juypter/Google Collab notebooks where the stylized content is front and center with the interactive component integrated into the content.
We don't really have this in R today. We can build beautiful documents, websites, slide decks, etc, but the interactive shell around the stylized content is lacking. R Notebooks would be perfect if the content rendered as we went, but it doesn't; we have to knit the document which in my use case, defeats the purpose.
I had great success teaching using Google Collab notebooks last semester, and RMarkdown with learnr is the closest that has comes to that in my opinion. It's great for R of course, but I was hoping to change the engine, as we can today in RMarkdown.