Location: inst/indiedown (folder)
Template assets are stored in a folder inst/indiedown.
This folder contains all the necessary information to customize your
markdown template. It can contain basic pandoc settings, additional
LaTeX settings and dynamic pandoc settings.
Location: default.yaml (required)
default.yaml is the only required element of an
indiedown template. It specifies the default pandoc options used by your
template. To experiment with pandoc options, simply add them to the YAML
header of a standard R Markdown document.
Most relevant LaTeX options can be set as pandoc options. For example, pandoc options allow you to set a customized font or a user defined geometry. If possible always prefer Pandoc options instead of LaTeX (covered below), as this will minimize unwanted interactions with other options.
For a detailed description of all pandoc options, see the ‘Variables for LaTeX’ section in the pandoc Manual.
default.yaml, as well as preamble.tex
supports substitution of the variable
<<indiedown_path>, which is explained below.
Location: preamble.tex (optional,
advanced)
Sometimes, pandoc options are just not enough. While pandoc allows
you to directly apply single LaTeX commands in the YAML header (using
headers-include), preamble.tex offers a more
convenient way to include LaTeX commands at the beginning of your
document.
To include commands, simply edit preamble.tex. Common
options set in preamble.tex are the modification of section
headings (e.g., \usepackage[small]{titlesec}), the
provision of the H float modifier
(\usepackage{float}), or the packages used by kableExtra.
For most customizations, it is recommended to turn off the default
LaTeX title page, using \renewcommand\maketitle{}. Creating
your own title page via LaTeX commands in the R Markdown script or by a
customized R function is a much easier and more flexible way to create a
customized title page.
Location: pre_processor.R (optional,
advanced)
In a few cases, pandoc options should be set dynamically. E.g., the
geometry of a document should depend on whether it uses two columns or
just one. pre_processor.R allows you to dynamically modify
pandoc options, using plain R. See the example script for how to use
it.
default.yaml, as well as preamble.tex
supports substitution of the variable
<<indiedown_path>. Whenever you mention
<<indiedown_path> in one of your files, it will be
substituted by the path to the indiedown folder.
Most customized styles will include some additional assets, such as a
logo or a special font. Assets can be put into arbitrarily named
folders. To access the assets from default.yaml or
preamble.tex, simply use
<<indiedown_path>/res and the path will be
correctly resolved by indiedown.
Indiedown packages use R functions to generate LaTeX code for customization.
For most customizations, it is recommended to turn off the default
LaTeX title page, and create your own title page via LaTeX commands. The
basic repertory are the LaTeX commands \large,
\Large, \LARGE, \huge, etc, along
with vspace{1ex}, but all LaTeX trickery can be applied.
The LaTeX helper functions should be put in the R folder of
your package.
R Markdown Templates demonstrate the use of a customized style. R
Markdown requires you to put them in
inst/rmarkdown/templates/mytemplate. RStudio will recognize
them and show them when you click ‘New R Markdown Document’ and ‘from
Template’. You can also use
usethis::use_rmarkdown_template() to add a new
template.