Customize & write

Now that you have imported your own data, it’s time to customize the report content and style.

Places to customize and change content are marked with the text “EDIT:”. Find all edit markers in the RStudio project with Ctrl + Shift + F to open the Find in Files wizard.

Report metadata and options

The report metadata and options are set in the YAML and setup chunk in 01_producer-report.qmd.

Start with the YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) header, which is the content sandwiched between three dashes (---) at the top of the file. It contains document metadata, parameters, and customization options.

The only fields you need to edit are:

  • title is what appears at the very top of the report. The logo appears above the title text (see the markdown primer for help with image syntax).

  • subtitle appears below the title toward the right side.

  • params define the parameter values used when iteratively rendering the report with the RStudio Render button. They must be an existing combination of producer ID and year that have sample results in your data.

    • producer_id choose a producer ID in your data that you want to render the report for.

    • year choose the year of the samples for the chosen producer ID to include in the report.

Example changed YAML
# EDIT: Replace logo.png in images folder with your own and add project name.
title: "![](images/beautiful-soil.png) The Best Soil Health Survey"
# EDIT: Subtitle right aligned below title.
subtitle: "Results from 2024"
# EDIT: Choose a valid producer_id/year combo that exists in your dataset.
params:
  producer_id: "Sammy Sunflower"
  year: 2024

Ignore the other YAML fields and values until you would like to explore other ways of customizing your reports. Learn about the available YAML fields for HTML documents and MS Word documents.

Report content

01_producer-report.qmd uses the Quarto {{< include >}} shortcode to embed content within the main parameterized report.

Edit the following Quarto files to fit your project and adjust/remove soil measurements that were tested.

├── 03_project-summary.qmd
├── 04_soil-health-background.qmd
├── 05_physical-measurements.qmd
├── 06_biological-measurements.qmd
├── 07_chemical-measurements.qmd
├── 08_looking-forward.qmd

Under the Project Results heading in 01_producer-report.qmd, update the sample depth:

All samples were collected from [EDIT: SOIL DEPTH (e.g. 0-6 inches, or 0-30 cm)].

01_producer-report.qmd calls 02_secion-template.qmd as a child document to generate a section for each measurement_group defined in the data-dictionary.csv. You shouldn’t need to edit 02_secion-template.qmd unless you want more advanced customization.

Style and theme

The look and feel of your reports can be customized by changing the fonts and colors to match your branding. The plot and table outputs are controlled by the set-fonts-colors chunk in 01_producer-report.qmd. HTML reports are styled by the styles.css file. MS Word reports are styled using the word-template.docx template file.

set-fonts-colors chunk

The fonts and colors used in the tables and plots of the report are defined in this chunk. Change these values to match your own branding.

Style sheets

The style sheets can be found in the resources directory and edited to customize the report appearance to match your own branding.

HTML

styles.css controls the appearance of HTML reports. Learn more about CSS.

/* Edit these :root variables */
:root {
    --primary-color: #023B2C;
    --secondary-color: #335c67;
    --link-color: #a60f2d;
    --light-color: #F2F0E6;
    --fg-color: white; /* color for text with colored background*/
    --heading-font: "Georgia";
    --body-font: "Arial";
}

MS Word

Open word-template.docx and modify the styles according to Quarto documentation and Microsoft documentation.