{iheiddown}
is a package that provides templates for
writing documents in styles consistent with the Geneva Graduate
Institute/ Institut de Hautes Etudes Internationales et du Developpement
(IHEID) in (R) markdown.
The main use case for {iheiddown}
is for writing a
Masters or PhD Dissertation at IHEID, as it offers a
user-friendly, simple, and straightforward way to write a well-formatted
and consistent dissertation that weaves together argument, evidence, and
interpretation. However, it also integrates templates for creating IHEID
themed presentations powered by {xaringan}
as
well as a template for IHEID course syllabi.
The package is built upon the IHEID LaTeX dissertation template, which offers versus common word processors:
Though you may have never had problems using Word in the past, the size and structure of most theses tax Word’s capabilities.
However, {iheiddown}
helps you avoid the need to (learn
how to) write in LaTeX. LaTeX can be daunting for first time users, and
many users often feel it would only pay off if they were writing very
complex dissertations. {iheiddown}
allows students to write
their dissertations in RMarkdown. Markdown is a simple
and easy-to-use way to ‘markup’ parts of plain text as headings,
bold or italics (and much more) in ways that
remain very readable and thus editable as you write.
{iheiddown}
, R, and LaTeX do the work to turn this into a
beautiful dissertation. You write in minimally marked-up plain text and
you get a correctly-formatted dissertation out at the end.
But wait, there’s more! Because {iheiddown}
is an
R package, it especially shines for those who are
analysing data. R is a
free statistical programme and language that has a
huge range of packages available for most current methods of
analysis and visualisation. RStudio is a
typical frontend that makes working in R and especially
with {iheiddown}
easy. So though {iheiddown}
is especially attractive to those writing dissertations with many tables
and figures, the user-friendly nature and pretty output should make it
of great benefit to nearly anyone writing a thesis project.
You can see an example of the kind of dissertation output on the package website.
Not quite done yet, there is even more! Take a look at the following table for all available templates:
Templates | Format | Status |
---|---|---|
Thesis | :thumbsup: | |
Syllabus | :thumbsup: | |
{xaringan}
presentations |
HTML (can be printed to PDF) | :thumbsup: |
Problem set | :thumbsup: | |
Posters | HTML (+ print to PDF) | :star2: :new: :star2: |
Your idea | Open a PR! | :sparkles: |
You will first need to install the following software on your system2:
The easiest way to install the latest stable version of
{iheiddown}
is via CRAN. Simply open the R console and
enter the following to install and load {iheiddown}
install.packages('iheiddown')
library(iheiddown)
That’s it! iheiddown
is now installed and ready to
go.
To get access to the latest features, you may want to install the development version of the package.
An easy way of getting access to this version is to install the
latest main version of {iheiddown}
from Github. To do that,
please install the {remotes}
package from CRAN and then
enter the following commands into the console:
remotes::install_github("jhollway/iheiddown")
remotes::install_github("jhollway/iheiddown@develop")
Alternatively, you can find the binaries for all major OSes – Windows, Mac, and Linux – by looking up the latest release of the package here. Manually download the appropriate binary for your operating system, and install using an adapted version of the following commands:
install.packages("~/Downloads/iheiddown_winOS.zip", repos = NULL)
install.packages("~/Downloads/iheiddown_macOS.tgz", repos = NULL)
install.packages("~/Downloads/iheiddown_linuxOS.tar.gz", repos = NULL)
{iheiddown}
, among other things, sets up a thesis
template that you can then modify for your dissertation. It’s very easy
to get started!
Since the process is similar for theses, presentations, problem sets and syllabi let us take a look at how to set up a thesis project.
R Markdown...
.From Template
.Thesis {iheiddown}
.index
, i.e. your main
.Rmd
should be named index.Rmd
Congratulations! You have now set up your first thesis project. For a more detailed walkthrough of the different functionalities and how to get started with each one, please check out the different articles on the package website.
Please raise an issue for this repo if you encounter any bugs or if you have any feature requests. You can also vote on existing issues that you would like to see addressed soon. If you would like to contribute to the repo, please fork this repository and open a pull request when your changes are ready, or get in touch with me directly.
1 For Windows users, make sure
you have the latest MiKTeX version installed on you computer. From the
MiKTeX console, you should regularly check for updates as “MiKTeX user
mode”, this will prevent issues when generating your pdf document from
your Markdown template.
2 Note that, for unclear reasons,
Yihui Xie’s TinyTeX is causing
trouble. Try tinytex::uninstall_tinytex()
and install a
local copy. Unfortunately, full LaTeX installations are
large.