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Headers and Footers

Source: vignettes/headers_footers.Rmd
headers_footers.Rmd

A core feature of {docorator} is flexible header and footer options via the header and footer arguments in the as_docorator() function. These are made possible via the underlying fancyhdr latex library. This makes it possible to have multiple lines of headers and/or footers, as well as multiple positions of text within each.

Specifying headers

The header argument accepts a fancyhead object. The fancyhead object accepts a series of fancyrow objects. These correspond to each line of text in the header. Within a fancyrow, you can optionally specify the left, center, and right text (NA indicates a blank position). Some examples are below.

One line header 

fancyhead(
  fancyrow(left = "My Study", center = NA, right = NA)
)

Multi-line header 

fancyhead(
  fancyrow(left = "My Study", center = NA, right = "Date as of today"),
  fancyrow(left = "My Population", center = NA, right = NA),
  fancyrow(left = NA, center = "My Table", right = NA)
)

Specifying footers

The footer argument of as_docorator() accepts a fancyfoot object. This behaves identically to fancyhead above by accepting a series of fancyrow objects for each line of the footer.

fancyfoot(
  fancyrow(left = "Date as of today", center = NA, right = NA)
)
fancyfoot(
  fancyrow(left = "General footer for the table", center = NA, right = NA),
  fancyrow(left = "Date as of today", center = NA, right = "path/to/docname.pdf")
)

Available utilities for standard or automated information

There are several functions available for features like page numbering and time stamps. These are prefixed with doc_*().

Add automatic page numbering in upper left 

fancyhead(
  fancyrow(left = "My study", center = NA, right = doc_pagenum())
)

Add file path in bottom left and datetime in bottom right 

fancyfoot(
  fancyrow(left = doc_path(), center = NA, right = doc_datetime())
)

Putting it all together 

gt::gtcars |>
  dplyr::slice_head(n = 10) |>
  dplyr::select(mfr, model, year, msrp) |>
  gt::gt(
    groupname_col = "mfr",
    row_group_as_column = TRUE
  ) |> 
  as_docorator( 
    display_name = "mytbl",
    header = fancyhead(
      fancyrow(left = "My Study", center = NA, right = doc_pagenum()),
      fancyrow(left = "My Population", center = NA, right = NA),
      fancyrow(left = NA, center = "My Table", right = NA)
    ),
    footer = fancyfoot(
      fancyrow(
        left = "path/mytbl.pdf", center = NA, right = "Data as of 2025-01-01"
      )
    ) 
  ) |> 
  render_pdf()

Docorator example

Note about sizing

{docorator} will automatically adjust the allowed height for headers and footers according to the lines of text required. If many lines of headers and/or footers are specified, this cuts down on the available height for the table/figure.

NEW as of v0.6.0 {docorator} can auto-wrap long lines of text in PDF documents via the fancywrap argument of render_pdf(). See ?render_pdf for details.

Please file an issue if you discover unexpected results or problems related to headers and footers.