Question: Is there a way to print, from within R, a LaTeX table directly to an image file (for inclusion in another document/webpage). Basically, I'd like to supply LaTeX code to a function that saves it as an image to the working directory. 

Pipe dreams?

Answer: 
xtable provides the option to output either latex or html markup. You could put the html in directly.

Having said that I too would like to be able to go directly from knit or sweave to png or svg. I was trying to do this just last week. I am building an inkscape infographic (svg) and have been looking for a way to insert a linked image of a table that updates by running R code.

In initial testing I combined the use of xtable and Spacedman's (+1) code to get some nice png output (Ubuntu). -D option allows controlling of resolution.

I'm looking into a dvi->svg converter which is more like what I am after.
<http://dvisvg.sourceforge.net/>

```
dvipng.dvi <- function (object, file, res=600)
{
    if (missing(file)){
        invisible(sys(
                paste("dvipng -T tight", "-D", res, shQuote(object$file)))
            )
}
    else{
        invisible(sys(
                paste("dvipng -T tight", "-D", res, "-o", file, shQuote(object$file)))
            )
    }
}

tt <- head(iris)

dvipng.dvi(dvi.latex(latex(xtable(tt))), file='iris.png')

```
With Spaceman's answer, I was able to come up with a solution that does not rely on `latex` from the `Hmisc` package as `latex` was causing some path problems for me: 

```
table.png <- function(obj, name) { 
first <- name
name <- paste(name,".tex",sep="")
sink(file=name)
cat('
\\documentclass{report}
\\usepackage[paperwidth=5.5in,paperheight=7in,noheadfoot,margin=0in]{geometry}
\\begin{document}\\pagestyle{empty}
')
print(xtable(obj))
cat('
\\end{document}
')
sink()
texi2dvi(file=name)
cmd <- paste("dvipng -T tight", shQuote(paste(first,".dvi",sep="")))
invisible(sys(cmd))
cleaner <- c(".tex",".aux",".log",".dvi")
invisible(file.remove(paste(first,cleaner,sep="")))
}

```