README.md

In kevinstadler/Rmdanimation: An R package for on-the-fly creation and embedding of R animations in Markdown

Rmdanimation

This package provides on-the-fly creation and embedding of R animations in R Markdown files.

It currently consists of two basic wrapper functions around R's animation package which export animations to files and return a Markdown or HTML snippet to embed those animations in place.

Installation

devtools::install_github("kevinstadler/Rmdanimation")

If you don't have the devtools package installed you can also simply download and source() Rmdanimation.R.

Dependencies

The only external dependencies are those required by animation, in particular ImageMagick if you want to create gifs. animatedHTML() works without any dependencies.

Usage

Since the functions are just a thin wrapper around the animation package, all ani.options can be passed as extra arguments to control the details of the animation. The animations are saved to external files and the functions return a Markdown/HTML snippet that, when printed to the output, embed the animation in your document. There are two ways to embed animations:

1. in a normal R code chunk, use the results='asis' option and call cat() to print the Markdown snippet (otherwise you'll end up with superfluous line numbering added by print()). This way multiple animations can be output by one code chunk.

```{r someanimations, results='asis'}
library(Rmdanimation)
cat(animatedGIF({for (i in 0:10) plot(i, i, xlim=c(0,10), ylim=c(0,10))}, "myfirstanimation"))

# when passed to animatedGIF(), the `loop` argument specifies how many times the
# animation should be repeated before stopping
cat(animatedGIF({for (i in 0:10) plot(i, i, xlim=c(0,10), ylim=c(0,10))}, "stoppinganimation", loop=1))```

1. alternatively, if you don't want your R code to be printed anyway, you can simply use the inline code chunk syntax:

   `r library(Rmdanimation); animatedGIF({for (i in 0:10) plot(i, i, xlim=c(0,10), ylim=c(0,10))}, "myfirstanimation")`

Navigation

Only animatedGIF() called with allowHTML=FALSE will return a pure Markdown image snippet. Any other call will also return some HTML decoration to aid in controlling the animation when embedded in a website, which is particularly useful if you want semi-interactive animations in an Rmarkdown-based reveal.js slideshow or the like.

animatedHTML() in particular will create a separate HTML file with your animation using SciAnimator which comes with fully configurable frame-by-frame navigation tools. The HTML snippet returned by the function is simply an Iframe displaying this page.

`r animatedHTML({for (i in 0:10) plot(i, i, xlim=c(0,10), ylim=c(0,10))}, "navigableanimation")`

SciAnimator allows fine-grained control over which navigation elements are shown by passing a config string as its single.opts parameter. Also note how for animatedHTML() the loop parameter is boolean:

`r animatedHTML({for (i in 0:10) plot(i, i, xlim=c(0,10), ylim=c(0,10))}, "navigableanimation", loop=FALSE, single.opts="'controls': ['first', 'play', 'loop', 'speed']")`

For the full list of options see the SciAnimator reference.

See revealjs.Rmd for an example using animations in a reveal.js slideshow.

kevinstadler/Rmdanimation documentation built on May 20, 2019, 9:08 a.m.