Introduction. Components. Output formats. Customization. Editing. Publishing
Yihui Xie is a software engineer at RStudio. He is the author of several R packages, and interested in statistical computing, data visualization, and web technologies. He founded the largest online community for statistics "Capital of Statistics" in China in 2006. After publishing a few journal papers, a PhD thesis, and the book Dynamic Documents with R and knitr, the frustration with LaTeX eventually led to the creation of bookdown.
If you have written about statistics and included examples that are
implemented in a programming language, you have struggled with the
challenge of weaving together these two distinct forms of
communication. Donald Knuth laid out a model of "literate
programming" (1992) that prioritizes the clarity of computer code
by embedding snippets of code within explanatory text. A new tool
for authoring large-scale dynamic documents in this paradigm is the
bookdown package, described by a book of the same name, and it
stands as the most comprehensive and extensible tool available for
R users... R Markdown...had limitations as well. There was no
method to cross-reference figures in one chapter from another
chapter of the book. The figures were not numbered successively.
These problems, and many others, were solved by the release of the
bookdown package...Xie has revolutionized the publishing of
statistical reports using the knitr and rmarkdown packages and this
is surely the next step in that revolution. His idea of books being
versions instead of editions is ground-breaking. I look forward to
the continual improvements to this bookdown package and this book
in the years to come."~The American StatisticianThere could be a
lot of interesting and unexpected ways that bookdown could be used
to generate content. For example, automated software tests for
clinical data analysis programs can be scheduled to run overnight
and used knitr to create PDFs to show to auditors. The issue is
that hundreds of files could be created. Bookdown could generate a
much more organized and cross-referenced package to show to
regulators during audits. ~ Max KuhnI definitely recommend
publication, and as quickly as possible. People are waiting for
this. The R/bookdown/knitr system is better than GitBook for
scientific work with code and formulas, especially if combined with
R Studio. ~ Jan de Leeuw, UCLAI would whole-heartedly recommend
this book for publication. I think the ability to render long
documents in a variety of formats, with text intermingled with
code, will only grow in importance in future years. This book and
associated package are clearly a major step towards being able to
achieve this. The book was very well written, and notwithstanding
the few suggestions I had for improvements, I think there is little
modification that needs to be done before publication. I am sure it
will prove interesting and useful to many readers. ~ Michael
Grayling, U. of CambridgeBookdown is hugely useful for long-form
documents: books, course notes, theses/dissertations. And I expect
it to be widely adopted for those purposes…The book is quite nicely
written: clear and concise. ~ Karl Broman, U. of WisconsinThe
audience would absolutely include R users who are comfortable with
Word but not LaTeX (for example, in my department, most of the
graduate students have used R Markdown, but only a couple know
LaTeX)…One huge advantage of bookdown is that you can have a
current version of a book online as you develop it. ~ Brooke
Anderson, Colorado State U.Simply amazing! Six hours, basic R and R
Markdown knowledge, and I created a book using bookdown. ~ Lars
Schoebitz
If you have written about statistics and included examples that are
implemented in a programming language, you have struggled with the
challenge of weaving together these two distinct forms of
communication. Donald Knuth laid out a model of "literate
programming" (1992) that prioritizes the clarity of computer code
by embedding snippets of code within explanatory text. A new tool
for authoring large-scale dynamic documents in this paradigm is the
bookdown package, described by a book of the same name, and it
stands as the most comprehensive and extensible tool available for
R users... R Markdown...had limitations as well. There was no
method to cross-reference figures in one chapter from another
chapter of the book. The figures were not numbered successively.
These problems, and many others, were solved by the release of the
bookdown package...Xie has revolutionized the publishing of
statistical reports using the knitr and rmarkdown packages and this
is surely the next step in that revolution. His idea of books being
versions instead of editions is ground-breaking. I look forward to
the continual improvements to this bookdown package and this book
in the years to come."~The American StatisticianThere could be a
lot of interesting and unexpected ways that bookdown could be used
to generate content. For example, automated software tests for
clinical data analysis programs can be scheduled to run overnight
and used knitr to create PDFs to show to auditors. The issue is
that hundreds of files could be created. Bookdown could generate a
much more organized and cross-referenced package to show to
regulators during audits. ~ Max KuhnI definitely recommend
publication, and as quickly as possible. People are waiting for
this. The R/bookdown/knitr system is better than GitBook for
scientific work with code and formulas, especially if combined with
R Studio. ~ Jan de Leeuw, UCLAI would whole-heartedly recommend
this book for publication. I think the ability to render long
documents in a variety of formats, with text intermingled with
code, will only grow in importance in future years. This book and
associated package are clearly a major step towards being able to
achieve this. The book was very well written, and notwithstanding
the few suggestions I had for improvements, I think there is little
modification that needs to be done before publication. I am sure it
will prove interesting and useful to many readers. ~ Michael
Grayling, U. of CambridgeBookdown is hugely useful for long-form
documents: books, course notes, theses/dissertations. And I expect
it to be widely adopted for those purposes…The book is quite nicely
written: clear and concise. ~ Karl Broman, U. of WisconsinThe
audience would absolutely include R users who are comfortable with
Word but not LaTeX (for example, in my department, most of the
graduate students have used R Markdown, but only a couple know
LaTeX)…One huge advantage of bookdown is that you can have a
current version of a book online as you develop it. ~ Brooke
Anderson, Colorado State U.Simply amazing! Six hours, basic R and R
Markdown knowledge, and I created a book using bookdown. ~ Lars
Schoebitz
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