binb

Binb is not Beamer: Stylish pdf Presentations from RMarkdown

Motivation

The Beamer package is very popular for making pdf presentations from LaTeX, and also supported from Markdown and RMarkdown. This package (currently) provides functionality to use the following custom (LaTeX) themes for Beamer directly via RMarkdown:

• Metropolis (formerly mtheme) by Matthias Vogelgesang (longer demo)
• IQSS by Ista Zahn (longer demo)
• Presento by Ratul Saha (longer demo)
• Monash by Rob J Hyndman

The original LaTeX styles been converted to be directly useable from RMarkdown

Examples

Metropolis

Consider the following minimal example, adapted from the original minimal example at the bottom of the Metropolis page:

---
title: A minimal example
author: Matthias Vogelgesang
date: \today
institute: Centre for Modern Beamer Themes
output: binb::metropolis
---

# First Section

## First Frame

Hello, world!

It creates a three-page pdf file which we converted into this animated gif

IQSS

Similarly, for IQSS we use the following input adapting the example above but showing sections and subsections for the nice headings it generates:

---
title: A minimal example
author: Ista Zahn
date: \today
institute: IQSS
output: binb::iqss
---

# First Section

## First Sub-Section

### First Frame

Hello, world!

# Second Section

## Second Subsection

### Second Frame

Another planet!

This creates this pdf file which we converted into this animated gif:

Presento

The following small example adapted some of the slides from original minimal example from the Presento repo:

---
author: Ratul Saha
address: www.ratulsaha.com
title: PRESENTO
subtitle: clean, simple and extensible
date: \today
output: binb::presento
---

## Presento

- \begin{center}\largetext{The design is \underline{clean}}\end{center}    \bigskip
- \begin{center}\largetext{The rules are \underline{simple}}\end{center}   \bigskip
- \item \begin{center}\largetext{The code is \underline{extensible}}\end{center}


## Open Source Fonts

-  \montserratfont This is \textsc{Montserrat}	\bigskip
-  \notosansfont This is \textsc{Noto Sans}		\bigskip
-  \latolightfont This is Lato (light)          \bigskip
-  \inconsolatafont This is inconsolata         \bigskip
-  \textsc{This is Alegreya Sans small caps}    \bigskip


## Color Palette

\begin{center}
  \crule[colordgray] \crule[colorhgray] \crule[colorblue] \crule[colorgreen] \crule[colororange]
\end{center}

____

\begin{center}
 \hugetext{BIG BOLD TEXT}
 \medskip
 \small but background color does not work
\end{center}

____

\tikz[overlay,remember picture] \node[opacity=0.8, at=(current page.center)]{%
  \includegraphics[width=\paperwidth]{images/skeleton}};
\begin{textblock}{7}(7,2.5)
  {\color{colorblue}\hugetext{\textbf{RUN!}}}
\end{textblock}

From this, one can creats this pdf file which can be converted into this animated gif:

Status

The package is fairly new and susceptible to change, but on CRAN.

Usage

The package is on CRAN and can be installed via a standard

install.packages("binb")

and can then be used as a Markdown template via RStudio, or via code such as

library(rmarkdown)
draft("myslides.Rmd", template="metropolis", package="binb", edit=FALSE)
setwd("myslides")  ## template creates a new subdir
render("myslides.Rmd")

to create a first draft of a new myslides.Rmd.

Once installed, the above code examples should work as expected.

Requirements

Beyond the R package dependencies, a working pandoc binary is needed. RStudio installs its own copy, otherwise do what is needed on your OS (i.e., something like sudo apt-get install pandoc pandoc-citeproc).

The Metropolis LaTeX package is used, but we assume that is is installed via TeXLive, MikTeX or another LaTeX bundle. The LaTeX code for the IQSS Beamer Theme and the Presento Theme are included (and adapted for RMarkdown use).

These themes use additional (free) fonts you may need to install:

• Metropolis wants Fira Sans but can proceed with alternate fonts;
• IQSS Beamer Theme wants Libertinus, see the IQSS Beamer Theme page for details.
• Presento Theme wants Montserrat, Lato Light (also here), Noto Sans, Algreya Sans as the small caps font and Inconsolata as a monospaced font.

If you use Debian or Ubuntu, you can use the informal font packages I created for Fira and Fira Sans, Libertinus, Montserrat, Alegreya Sans, respectively.

Most modern desktop systems make it easy to install additional fonts as a user. However, instructions vary so please see for your particular system.

Authors

Dirk Eddelbuettel and Ista Zahn.

License

GPL-2 for this package.