useR! 2024

Being able to produce hundreds, even thousands, of reports at once with parameterized reporting is one of the most powerful tools available to R users (and Python users too, thanks to Quarto). But, when making reports in this way, problems can arise. A chart that works well in one report looks terrible in another. A map that fits nicely into a report for one state doesn't fit in another state's report. Possibilities for errors abound. In this talk, I will share hard-earned lessons on best practices for generating parameterized reports on PDF while using web technologies (and thus avoid LaTeX). With advice on a range of topics, including formatting data, designing reports, and creating plots that work across multiple reports, this talk will help those who don't just want to do parameterized reporting, but want to do it well. This talk will cover a set of methods for producing parametrized reports for PDF, going from the good old method (Rmd and pagedown) to new ones (Quarto and pagedjs-cli or Quarto and weasyprint, Typst) plus the pagedreport package, which will gain a Quarto extension before the conference.