Switch to rmarkdown

[ramnathv]

The rmarkdown package offers a lot more flexibility than the native markdown package. In particular, it uses pandoc to allow converting documents across multiple formats.

The more I think about it, Slidify is evolving into an advanced dialect of R Markdown that supports more than just markdown and code chunks. The modular infrastructure should permit Slidify documents to be rendered in any format.

I know that the rmarkdown package supports a lot of powerful pandoc functionality. But I believe the strong templating capabilities in slidify will allow me to do more. For example, a user can create a slide template for beamer that lays out content in a specific fashion. The advantage of this approach is that a user will not have to mix markdown and html/latex, but just write in markdown and specify that the renderer has to use a particular layout. The end result is that the same document can be rendered as pdf or html or any format of the user's choosing.

I should be careful not to replicate pandoc functionality, since pandoc is really good at what it does. The idea is to supplement what pandoc can do, and provide features that allow a higher degree of customization.

I have a working proof-of-concept, which needs to be cleaned up before pushing to github.

[znmeb]

I used to use PowerPoint as an outliner for Word documents and I've also used LyX as an outliner. What would be nice would be something along those lines - an R Markdown outliner / chunk editor. knitr supposedly will do chunk including / parent-child documents.

[ramnathv]

Thanks @znmeb . Those are great suggestions. I will keep them in mind while I figure out the best ways to move forward.