[Rd] Creating package Vignette

[Melissa Jane Hubisz]

Another workaround is to create a "dummy" vignette which does nothing
but include the pdf file.  Something like this:
vignette.Rnw:

% \VignetteIndexEntry{vignette}
% \VignetteKeywords{keywords here}
% \VignettePackage{package name}

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[fitpaper=true,pages=-]{vignette-source.pdf}
\end{document}

Not sure if this is totally kosher, but I did this for my package when
the vignette was too computationally intensive to be submitted to
CRAN.
-Melissa

On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 1:00 PM, Ben Bolker <bbolker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Prof Brian Ripley <ripley <at> stats.ox.ac.uk> writes:
>
>>
>> It depends what you mean by 'vignette': the R docs have been unclear
>> (but R >= 2.13.0 are more consistent).  In most cases a 'vignette' is
>> an Sweave document, the vignette source being the .Rnw file, and the
>> vignette PDF the processed .pdf file.
>>
>> At present vignette() means Sweave documents, as only they have
>> metadata like titles.  This is planned to be changed soon.
>>
>> On Thu, 14 Jul 2011, Nipesh Bajaj wrote:
>>
>> > Hi all, I was trying to create some vignette files for my newly
>> > developed package, however wondering whether there could be any
>> > simpler way to do so. In writing R extension it is advised to go
>> > through Sweave route, however I have already got a big pdf file and
>> > want to use this as package vignette.
>> >
>> > So far I have manually created the inst/doc folder in the main package
>> > skeleton, and put that file into this, which is not working by calling
>> > "vignette(file_name)" after I build  and load the package. I am
>>
>> file_name is not an argument to vignette(): it is 'topic'.  And topics
>> are normally file basenames (without any extension), not file names.
>>
>> > getting following error without opening that pdf file: "vignette
>> > 'file_name' *not* found"
>> >
>> > So I like to know, is there any way to use any arbitrary pdf file as
>> > vignette?
>>
>> By definition, no.
>>
>> >
>> > Any suggestion is highly appreciated.
>
>  One possibility: as a workaround, you could include your
> own "xvignette" function in your package: see below.
> It won't show you indices, but it will pick up any appropriately
> named file that you include in the inst/doc directory of your
> package ...
>
> xvignette <- function(vname,pkg,ext="pdf") {
>   vname <- paste(vname,ext,sep=".")
>   fn <- system.file("doc",vname,package=pkg)
>   if (nchar(fn)==0) stop("file not found")
>   utils:::print.vignette(list(pdf=fn))
>   invisible(fn)
>  }
>
>  You'll have to somehow alert your package users to the
> fact that this alternative documentation exists -- perhaps in the help
> package for the package itself.
>
>  You might fill in the default value of "pkg" above with your
> package name to make it easier on the user: I thought about
> using some version of getPackageName(environment(xvignette))
> to do it automatically, but that seems too complicated ...
>
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