olivroy/altdoc

Alternative to pkgdown to document packages

altdoc is a simple and powerful package to create documentation websites for R packages. altdoc makes it trivial to create beautiful websites for simple R packages, and it can efficiently organize documentation for complex projects with hundreds of functions or dozens vignettes. Its features include:

• Support for several documentation frameworks:
  • Quarto websites
  • Docsify
  • MkDocs.
  • Docute
• Render:
  • Quarto and Rmarkdown vignettes.
  • Reference pages for exported functions, along with evaluated examples.
  • Common sections: README.md, NEWS.md, CHANGELOG.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, CITATION.md, etc.
• Preview the site:
  • Browser
  • RStudio Viewer
• Deploy the website:
  • Github pages
  • Other platforms

Installation

You can install the CRAN version:

install.packages("altdoc")

You can also install the development version to benefit from the latest bug fixes:

remotes::install_github("etiennebacher/altdoc")

Quick start

A typical workflow with altdoc is to execute these commands from the root directory of the package:

### Create the website structure for one of the documentation generators
setup_docs(tool = "docsify")
# setup_docs(tool = "docute")
# setup_docs(tool = "mkdocs")
# setup_docs(tool = "quarto_website")

### Render the vignettes and man pages
render_docs()

### Preview the website
preview_docs()

See the Get Started vignette for more details.

Demos

The websites in this table were created using Altdoc:

Document Generator	R Package	Website	Settings
Docute	altdoc	🌐altdoc.etiennebacher.com	Altdoc Settings
Quarto	modelsummary	🌐modelsummary.com	Altdoc settings
Quarto	marginaleffects	🌐marginaleffects.com	Altdoc Settings
Quarto	tinytable	🌐vincentarelbundock.github.io/tinytable/	Altdoc Settings
Quarto	tinyplot	🌐grantmcdermott.com/tinyplot	Altdoc Settings
MkDocs	polars	🌐rpolars.github.io	Github Repository
Docsify	conductor	🌐conductor.etiennebacher.com	GitHub Repository
Docsify	countrycode	🌐vincentarelbundock.github.io/countrycode	Altdoc Settings
Docsify	WDI	🌐vincentarelbundock.github.io/WDI	Altdoc Settings

More

Tutorials

The altdoc website includes more information on topics like:

• How to get started
• How to customize your website
• How to deploy your website

Logo

The initial version of the logo was created with Chat-GPT and edited in Gimp by Vincent Arel-Bundock.