R is for
Authoring!!

OOH Session #119…
YAML

Open Office Hours
(March 03, 2026)

• Recap session #118
• Today’s topic(s):
  • YAML
• Shared problem-solving

Reminder – check it out!!

Fantastic resource!!

Recap of Session
#118:

Xaringan!!

• YAML
• Formatting
• Shortcut keys
• Extensions

---
title: "Presentation Ninja"
subtitle: "⚔<br/>with xaringan"
author: "Yihui Xie"
institute: "RStudio, PBC"
date: "2016/12/12 (updated: `r Sys.Date()`)"
output:
  xaringan::moon_reader:
    lib_dir: libs
    nature:
      highlightStyle: github
      highlightLines: true
      countIncrementalSlides: false
---

1

helps make presentation self–contained by creating folder with necessary files when you knit (generally considered good practice)

2

slide behavior often specified here, under nature “sub–key” (for example, autoplay – for more info, see ?xaringan::moon_reader)

3

refers to code highlighting (not hyperlinks)

4

should fragments (-- characters) be counted as separate slides or not within the slide counter

Xaringan:

.effect[
content being affected
]

Quarto/RevealJS:

[content being affected]{.effect}

OR, alternatively...

::: {.effect}

content being affected

:::

Note

Pressing h from anywhere while within the presentation (as you are navigating) reveals default shortcut keys & effects

xaringanExtra:

• additional capabilities that do not come bundled with “base” xaringan
• activated within code blocks (not YAML)

xaringanthemer:

• takes care of (color & font) css stylings for you
  
• called out within YAML, but activated/specified within code chunk

Today…

YAML (YAML Ain’t Markup Language…)

Generally:

• cross-language serialized data format
  • where it began
  • currently YAML 1.2.2
• tutorial 1: , tutorial 2:
• beginner’s guide 1: , beginner’s guide 2:

Quarto/ RMarkdown:

Provides “meta” structure to be applied to entire rendered document (layout, fonts, format, stylings, etc)

• Quarto YAML

Session Info (March 03, 2026) Rendering:

R version 4.5.0 (2025-04-11 ucrt)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19045)

Matrix products: default
  LAPACK version 3.12.1

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.utf8 
[2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.utf8   
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.utf8
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                          
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.utf8    

time zone: America/Chicago
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] compiler_4.5.0    fastmap_1.2.0     cli_3.6.5         tools_4.5.0      
 [5] htmltools_0.5.8.1 otel_0.2.0        rstudioapi_0.17.1 yaml_2.3.10      
 [9] rmarkdown_2.30    knitr_1.51        jsonlite_2.0.0    xfun_0.52        
[13] digest_0.6.37     rlang_1.1.6       evaluate_1.0.5   

YAML Whazzat?!?

Grok response (3/3/26):

Query:

“I use YAML within Quarto and R Markdown documents. What are some other uses for YAML (please explain using non-technical jargon - e.g., to someone unfamiliar with computer languages)”