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:
  • 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 🌐pola-rs.github.io/r-polars 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:

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