zhuangreport is a personalised .Rmd template that I use for writing research reports and academic papers. This template is built based on lecturenotes by Grant McDermott. It is intended for documents that are going to be exported (i.e. “knitted”) to both HTML and PDF formats. In so doing, it tries to take care of various annoyances and inconsistencies that arise between these two formats.
This bespoke package is mainly for personal use. However, you can easily install it from GitHub:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("Zhuang-CHU/zhuangreport")Note that I use several external packages in the template to demonstrate functionality. See the “Suggests” list at the bottom of the DESCRIPTION file. If you want to have these installed automatically, then you can simply amend the above installation command to:
# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("Zhuang-CHU/zhuangreport", dependencies = TRUE)Once the package is installed, open up the zhuangreport template in RStudio by navigating to:
File > New File > R Markdown > From Template > Research Report
(You can also select a “lean” template version that just provides the scaffolding without any explanatory text or examples.)
This R Markdown template was mostly designed for my own use. As such, it comes with no guarantees; although, please do let me know if you run into problems. Some potential limitations and requirements perhaps worth highlighting:
- It is change the font size and style in the PDF output is currently muted
This template essentially pulls mainly from Grant McDermott. I’ve accumulated over time to fit my own idiosyncratic writing and formatting needs. Some of these I stumbled upon on myself, most of them I found the old-fashioned way (i.e. searching on the Internet). Here is a non-exhaustive list of helpful sources that I’ve drawn upon.