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Getting started with UHHformats

Source: vignettes/UHHformats.Rmd
UHHformats.Rmd

The UHHformats package provides R Markdown and Quarto templates for HTML, PDF, and Word output. This vignette gives a quick overview of the different templates and how to get started.

Available templates

Template R Markdown function Quarto template
HTML document html_doc() html_doc
Simple PDF document pdf_doc() pdf_doc
PDF report pdf_report()|pdf_report| | PDF cheat sheet | pdf_cheatsheet() pdf_cheatsheet
Word document word_doc() word_doc

Getting started

R Markdown documents

Creating a document in RStudio

Once you installed the package you might need to close and re-open RStudio to see the UHHformats templates listed.

  1. Choose File > New File > R Markdown, then select From Template. You should then be able to create a new document from one of the package templates.

  2. Choose the directory in which you want to save your file and provide a file name (that name will be used for both the .Rmd file and the new folder in which the .Rmd file will be placed).

  3. If you are interested in the documentation already provided in the template file for getting started, render the document once before you start changing the content (click the Knit button).

Creating a new document in RStudio
Creating a new document in RStudio

Creating a document from the console

Use create_rmd_doc() to create a new directory with the template and all associated files:

UHHformats::create_rmd_doc(dirname = "my_report", template = "pdf_report")

Or use the standard rmarkdown function:

rmarkdown::draft("my_report.Rmd", template = "html_doc", package = "UHHformats")

Both functions create a subdirectory containing the .Rmd file and all required resources (images, fonts, LaTeX templates, etc.).

Rendering

In RStudio, click the Knit button. From the console:

rmarkdown::render("my_report/my_report.Rmd")

Important note: rmarkdown::render uses as default Pandoc to convert the Markdown document into PDF, HTML or Word. While RStudio uses its internal Pandoc installation (e.g., on a Mac located in ‘/Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/MacOS/pandoc/’), you need to have Pandoc and its citation parser also installed on your system. See https://pandoc.org/installing.html for instructions. This book chapter is also helpful: https://bookdown.org/yihui/rmarkdown-cookbook/install-pandoc.html

YAML header

Each template pre-fills an appropriate YAML header. For example, html_doc:

---
title: "Title"
author: "Name"
date: "2026-03-21"
output:
  UHHformats::html_doc:
    highlight: kate
    code_folding: show
    use_bookdown: true
    number_sections: false
---

See the help pages (e.g. ?html_doc, ?pdf_report) for all available options.

Quarto documents

Use create_quarto_doc() to set up a Quarto project:

UHHformats::create_quarto_doc(dirname = "my_html", template = "html_doc")
UHHformats::create_quarto_doc(dirname = "my_pdf", template = "pdf_doc", font = "TheSansUHH")

Available templates: html_doc, pdf_doc, pdf_report, pdf_cheatsheet, word_doc.

Rendering

In RStudio, open the .qmd file and click Render. From the console:

quarto::quarto_render("my_html/my_html.qmd")

Template folder structure

Both create_rmd_doc() and create_quarto_doc() create a new directory containing the template file and all required resources. The folder structure depends on the template and format:

R Markdown templates typically contain:

my_report/
├── my_report.Rmd        # The R Markdown document
├── bib/                 # Bibliography (.bib) and citation style (.csl) files
├── data/                # Example dataset (mtcars.csv)
└── images/              # Example images used in the template

Quarto templates include additional files:

my_report/
├── my_report.qmd        # The Quarto document
├── bib/                 # Bibliography (.bib) and citation style (.csl) files
├── data/                # Example dataset (mtcars.csv)
├── images/              # Example images used in the template
├── styles/              # Styling files (LaTeX headers, CSS, JS)
└── custom_lang.yml      # Custom language settings (e.g., figure/table labels)

The bib/ folder contains a sample .bib file with dummy references and a .csl file for the citation style (SAGE Harvard by default). The styles/ folder in Quarto templates holds the LaTeX preamble files (for PDF) or CSS/JS files (for HTML) that control the document appearance. The custom_lang.yml file allows you to customise labels such as “Figure”, “Table”, or “Contents” for different languages.

You can safely modify, add, or remove files in these folders to suit your needs.

Customising the pdf_report cover page

The pdf_report template includes a front cover page with a background image. You can replace the default image by swapping the file images/cover.png with your own image (keeping the same file name).

In the Quarto version, you can additionally customise the cover appearance directly in the YAML header:

  • cover-bg-image: path to the cover image.
  • cover-page-color: background colour as hex code (e.g., "7EB7DF").
  • cover-text-color: title text colour as hex code (e.g., "3A515C").
  • cover-fade-effect: if true (default), the background colour fades over the image from top to bottom. Set to false to display the image without the fade overlay.

In the R Markdown version, the cover image path is set via the params field in the YAML header (e.g., cover: images/cover.png). Replace the image file to use your own cover.

Font options

The default font for all templates is Helvetica. PDF and Word templates also support the University of Hamburg’s own font TheSans UHH (available to UHH members). Set the font via:

You can also use a custom font by setting font = "other" and replacing the font_XXX.ttf files in the template directory with your own files (keeping the same file names).

Prerequisites

  • PDF output requires a LaTeX distribution. Recommended: tinytex.
  • Quarto templates require the Quarto CLI.

See ?html_doc, ?pdf_doc, ?pdf_report, ?pdf_cheatsheet, or ?word_doc for all YAML options.