devtools 1.5

devtools 1.5 is now available on CRAN. It includes four new functions to make it easier to add useful infrastructure to packages:

add_test_infrastructure() will create testthat infrastructure when needed.
add_rstudio_project() adds an Rstudio project file to your package.
add_travis() adds a basic template for travis-ci .
add_build_ignore() makes it easy to add files to .Rbuildignore, escaping special characters as needed.

We’ve also bumped two dependencies: devtools now requires R 3.0.2 and roxygen2 3.0.0. We’ve also included many minor improvements and bug fixes, particularly for package installation. For example install_github() now prefers the safer github personal access token, and does a better job of installing the dependencies that you actually need. We also provide versions of help(), ? and system.file() that work with all packages, regardless of how they’re loaded. See a complete list of changes in the full release notes .

Recreating Septa Transit Timetables in Python

Recently, Rich and I were poking around transit data, and we were struck by the amount of structuring that goes into transit timetables. For example, consider this weekend rail schedule table from SEPTA, Philadelphia’s transit agency. Notice these big pieces: The vertical text on the left indicating trains are traveling “TO CENTER CITY”. The blue header, and spanner columns (“Services” and “Train Number”) grouping related columns. The striped background for easier reading. Also the black background indicating stations in Center City (the urban core). Tables like this often have to be created in tools like Illustrator, and updated by hand. At the same time, when agencies automate table creation, they often sacrifice a lot of the assistive features and helpful affordances of the table.

Mar 5

Outgrowing your laptop with R and Positron

R-Ladies Abuja has posted a recording of a recent talk on Positron, and you can find it here!

Quarto icon, PDF file icon, accessibility icon, and validation shield

Mar 5

PDF Accessibility and Standards

Quarto 1.9 brings PDF accessibility and standards support, building on new tagging features in LaTeX and Typst.

devtools 1.5

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Recreating Septa Transit Timetables in Python

Outgrowing your laptop with R and Positron

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