Xaringan: A wiki page to show screenshots and usage of existing themes

[yihui]

It will be nice to have a wiki page to showcase all existing themes in this package. You may need to dig out the examples in previous pull requests (e.g., #163 #165 #171 etc).

The wiki doesn't seem to support uploading screenshots, but you can upload images to any Github issues.

[jvcasillas]

I'd be happy to help out. Are you ok with me creating a page called "themes" in the wiki?

[yihui]

Yes. Thanks!

[pat-s]

Some additional enhancement thoughts:

• We could add (possible) source repos of themes.
• Also it maybe easier for the eyes if we would use smaller widths of the gifs? This would also enable to put more next to each other.
  (Assuming that the theme implementations will continue to grow, we might get in trouble at some point)

Thanks for the work @jvcasillas !

[tcgriffith]

Or we could build a blogdown site for the showcase?

A benefit is that we could show people how to host slides online.

Something like this:

https://themes.gohugo.io/

or the bookdown site:

https://bookdown.org/

[yihui]

Using either blogdown or bookdown sounds like a good idea to me. Actually I wonder if we have enough content to make a short (~100 pages) book. If we do, I'm sure I can get it published. FYI Chapter 7 of the R Markdown book was 17 pages: https://bookdown.org/yihui/rmarkdown/xaringan.html

I won't have time for this but I'll be happy to deal with the logistics.

[emitanaka]

Sounds fun! I would love to feature some creative use of functions in remark.js + knitr in xaringan (e.g examples of {{content}} use and ggplot tutorial slides). I would love to contribute.

[jvcasillas]

I’d be happy to contribute in any was as well.

[pat-s]

You could consider using tic to automate everything: https://github.com/krlmlr/tic.blogdown

[yihui]

Alright. I love this kind of "Github-issue-driven book development". I'll come back to you later after I briefly talk to my former book editor.

[emitanaka]

YAY! Thanks to @tcgriffith for inspiration to get started :D

My sketchy ideas:

• blogdown featuring screenshots and codes/css for different themes with tags (much like overleaf setup). To facilitate this, make it easier for theme creators to submit in a set standard (e.g. by google form). Then as @pat-s says can use CI to automate it.
• bookdown content
  
  
  
  • intro to HTML/CSS for R users (because statisticians normally don't learn this formally)
  
  
  • features of remark.js e.g. I don't think things like .someclass[sometext]=<span class="someclass">sometext</span> and
    
    .someclass[ sometext]
    
    is <div class="someclass">sometext</div> and {{content}} are not well known or understood.
  
  
  • Some knitr concepts relevant to xaringan. E.g. it didn't click to me until recently that it's not pandoc that processes Rmd in xaringan and hence why some features doesn't work (mainly thinking of class.source and class.output here). I like the potential of knit_code to make iterative revealing of codes easier. I'm sure there are more examples that can go here.
  
  
  • xaringan basics (as similar to Yihui's slides)
  
  
  • extension packages likeslidex and xaringanthemer?
  
  
  • showcase of different themes
  
  

[tcgriffith]

Well, that escalated quickly

[jvcasillas]

This is a great start. I think generally it would also be a good idea to include the information provided in the "general tips" section of the wiki (i.e., exporting to PDF, incorporating references, etc.). I haven't been keeping up with the current status of HTML widgets (most of the ones I use have always worked) by that could be something to include. I also use iframes a lot to include shiny apps. This is getting exciting!

[yihui]

With all of your ideas above, I feel the book is almost half done. 😂

I talked to my editor and he was not sure about the market, but said he'd be happy to ask reviewers after we send a book proposal. Well, you know I just never write book proposals, so let's get the whole book done before I talk to him again.

I feel @emitanaka wants to be one of the authors. Anyone else?

[jvcasillas]

Count me in. 👍🏽

[emitanaka]

[imagine happy dancing gif]
Yes! 😄
How do you want to proceed @yihui? I'm traveling fair bit October + November but will settle down December.

[tcgriffith]

is github down? I can't open new issues or edit the wiki

[rpodcast]

I've been starting to use xaringan for creating presentations at work and for personal projects, and while I still consider myself to be somewhere between a beginner and intermediate level, I'd be more than happy to contribute ideas and help bring a perspective of someone who wants to learn and become better! I'll keep watching this thread to see how Yihui and others want to get this started.

[yihui]

I'm finally back to this issue! I have been working on something else while thinking about this book, so I created a "poster" for it:

At the moment, this poster is mostly for fun, but we may formalize it as we move on.

I listed @emitanaka @jvcasillas @thercast as the tentative authors of the book. I don't know how much time I can invest in it myself. If it turns out you three are diligent enough, I'll be more than happy to take my name off the book.

Next steps:

1. @emitanaka You may create a Github repo named xaringan-book and add the rest of us as collaborators.

2. I can help with the RStudio project structure and LaTeX stuff. I'm very familiar with them, but if you want to do it by yourself, please feel free to borrow things from our recent book https://github.com/rstudio/rmarkdown-book.

3. Think about the chapter titles. I guess five or six chapter may be enough. We can have some flexible chapters or appendices, e.g., if we don't have enough content to make a 100-page book, we may write more on the basic HTML/CSS stuff. In fact, the number of pages often explodes as you add figures and screenshots, so 100 is really not a big number (about ten blog posts).

Personally I wish to finish the content of the book in two to three months once we start. This may sound crazy, but the pressure may be less than what you'd imagine. If you can devote one to two hours to it every day to write two pages, I believe we may even be able to finish it in a month.

I'll be happy to assist you along the way to make sure there is zero friction on the technical side.

[jvcasillas]

Awesome! I’m actually free to work on this almost exclusively until January.

[emitanaka]

That poster is way too cool!!!
The schedule is good for me. I'll make a repo by later today.

[pat-s]

Nice, that's an awesome example of community spirit!
Not sure how much time I can invest here (lately I do not as much free time as some months ago) but even just watching this growing is awesome.

[sje30]

With all of your ideas above, I feel the book is almost half done. 😂

I talked to my editor and he was not sure about the market, but said he'd be happy to ask reviewers after we send a book proposal. Well, you know I just never write book proposals, so let's get the whole book done before I talk to him again.

I feel @emitanaka wants to be one of the authors. Anyone else?

If this is still active, I'd be interested in helping out. I think xaringan is a great tool for making slides, and can contribute some of my recent thoughts/ideas to book drafting.