This vignette walks through the process of creating a new topic guide, technical report, or research report using R Markdown. We also suggest best practices for organizing your report files, and give some tips and tricks for formatting text.

System Setup

In order to generate a report using the {ratlas}, you must have the necessary output software installed on your computer. For Microsoft Word output (e.g., ratlas::topicguide_docx()), you will need Word installed. For PDF output (e.g., ratlas::techreport_pdf()), you will need a \(\LaTeX\) distribution. For an easy way to manage this, we recommend using the {tinytex} package. If you have another \(\LaTeX\) distribution already installed on your computer (e.g., MacTex on a Mac or MiKTeX on Windows), you should uninstall/delete that program before install {tinytex}. You can then be set up for PDF output by running this code (you only need to run it once after install {tinytex}):

install.packages("tinytex")
tinytex::install_tinytex()

We also assume that you are using RStudio. This is not required, but RStudio provides many shortcuts that make the process of writing and generating reports much smoother.

Creating a New Tech Report or Topic Guide

When beginning a new report, the first step is to create a new project in RStudio. This can be done by clicking:

File > New Project > New Directory > Tech Report using ratlas

You can then choose a name for your project, and specify the location to save the project on your computer. To lessen confusion later, we recommend saving each report as a new project in its own directory so that you can quickly and easily find the report at a later date. Please note, this example will use the terminology for creating a new tech report, but the same steps can be used to create a new topic guide.

Process for creating a new report with {ratlas}.Process for creating a new report with {ratlas}.Process for creating a new report with {ratlas}.Process for creating a new report with {ratlas}.

Figure 1: Process for creating a new report with {ratlas}.

Your new project should open automatically. You can then open the R Markdown document by clicking the .Rmd file in the Files pane of the RStudio window. The .Rmd document will automatically be named with the name you gave your project. This will open up a document that looks similar to Figure 2.