The {miniverse} - a collection of document creation packages for RStats

2019-10-09

miniverse

The miniverse is a constellation of packages for creating documents within R.

The purpose of this miniverse package is to:

  1. Highlight the common interface used across the packages
  2. Provide links to the various packages

Installation

You can install miniverse from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("coolbutuseless/minipdf")
devtools::install_github("coolbutuseless/minihtml")
devtools::install_github("coolbutuseless/minicss")
devtools::install_github("coolbutuseless/miniverse")

Create PDF documents
Github
Online documentation
Create CSS
Github
Online documentation
Create HTML documents
Github
Online documentation

Create XML documents
Github
Online documentation
Create SVG documents
Github
Online documentation

High level document description

  • A document is a tree of objects, with a a document node at the root, and element nodes branching from this.
  • A document is represented by a document class e.g. HTMLDocument()
  • Each thing within a document is represented by an element class e.g. HTMLElement()
  • Documents and Elements contain:
    • attributes - information about the item
    • children - nested sub-elements of this element

Initialising a new document

New documents can usually be initialised in 2 ways:

  1. R6 object initialisation
  2. A function call (which just wraps the R6 initialisation call)
package Document R6 initialisation Document function init
minipdf PDFDocument$new() pdf_doc()
minicss StyleSheet$new() css_stylesheet()
minihtml HTMLDocument$new() html_doc()
minixml XMLDocument$new() xml_doc()
minisvg SVGDocument$new() svg_doc()

Initialising a bare element

A bare element can usually be initialised in 3 ways:

  1. R6 object initialisation
  2. A function call (which just wraps the R6 initialisation call)
  3. Using a tag helper method which wraps the R6 initialisation call for a lot of standard elements. This usually includes autocomplete for the arguments for each element.
package Element R6 initialisation Document function init Helper
minipdf PDFCircle$new(), PDFRect$new(), etc pdf_doc() ptag$circle(), ptag$rect(), etc
minicss Style$new() css_style()
minihtml HTMLElement$new() html_elem() htag$title(), htag$div(), etc
minixml XMLElement$new() xml_elem()
minisvg SVGElement$new() svg_elem() stag$circle(), stag$rect(), etc

Appending an element to an existing element or document

After appending a new element, the returned value is the document that was being appended to.

package Append bare element to current element
minipdf PDFCircle$append(), PDFRect$append(), etc
minicss Style$append()
minihtml HTMLElement$append()
minixml XMLElement$append()
minisvg SVGElement$append()

Creating an element directly within an existing element or document

After creating a new element within an existing element, it is the new element that is returned.

package Create element within existing element (specific) Create element within existing element (generic)
minipdf PDFDocument$circle(), PDFDocument$rect(), etc
minicss StyleSheet$add()
minihtml HTMLElement$div(), HTMLDocument$title(), etc HTMLElement$add(), HTMLDocument$add(), etc
minixml XMLElement$add(), XMLDocument$add(), etc
minisvg SVGElement$circle(), SVGDocument$rect() SVGElement$add(), SVGDocument$add(), etc

Update attributes and Add Child Elements

In general when calling $update() on a document or element:

  • Named arguments are added as attributes of the element
  • Unnamed arguments are added as children of the element
package Update attributes and add child elements
minipdf PDFCircle$update(), PDFRect$update(), etc
minicss Style$update()
minihtml HTMLElement$update(), HTMLDocument$update()
minixml XMLElement$update(), XMLDocument$update()
minisvg SVGElement$update(), SVGDocument$update()