qkit

A small set of opinionated Quarto project templates with RStudio integration. qkit ships four template types — a Beamer presentation, an academic CV, a Quarto book project, and a minimalist academic paper — each with a sensible LaTeX preamble, ORCID-aware author handling, and a one-click File > New Project entry in RStudio.

Inspired by beamer-tips, adapted for a Quarto-based workflow and extended with three more formats.

Installation

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("GabboCg/qkit")

You also need Quarto and a working TeX distribution (TinyTeX or TeX Live). After installing qkit, restart RStudio once so the wizard picks up the new project templates.

Templates

Type	RStudio wizard entry	Output	Files dropped
beamer	qkit Beamer Presentation	XeLaTeX slides	index.qmd + _extensions/qkit/
cv	qkit CV	LuaLaTeX one-pager	index.qmd + _extensions/qkit/
book	qkit Book	XeLaTeX book (Krantz class)	full multi-file Quarto book project
paper	qkit Paper	XeLaTeX article + Internet Appendix	index.qmd, internet-appendix.qmd, title.tex, preamble.tex, preamble-appendix.tex, mark-last-author.lua, references.bib, references-appendix.bib

The Beamer and CV formats are backed by a Quarto extension; Book and Paper are self-contained project scaffolds (no extension installed).

Usage

From RStudio

File > New Project > New Directory, pick one of the four qkit entries, fill in the wizard fields, and click Create. RStudio opens the scaffolded index.qmd in the editor.

From the R console

qkit::create_project("my-slides", type = "beamer", title = "Talk Title")
qkit::create_project("my-cv",     type = "cv",     author = "Your Name")
qkit::create_project("my-book",   type = "book",   title = "Book Title", author = "Your Name")
qkit::create_project("my-paper",  type = "paper",  title = "Paper Title")

To render an already-scaffolded document:

qkit::qkit_render("my-slides/index.qmd")
qkit::qkit_preview("my-slides/index.qmd")   # live-reload preview

qkit_render() auto-installs the qkit Quarto extension into the project directory if it isn't already there (only relevant for beamer and cv — the book and paper formats don't use the extension).

To install the qkit Quarto extension manually into any existing Quarto project:

qkit::install_extension(path = ".")

YAML format keys

Format	YAML format: entry
Beamer	qkit-beamer
CV	qkit-pdf
Book	configured in _quarto.yml's format: pdf: block (no extension key)
Paper	configured in index.qmd's format: pdf: block (no extension key)

Per-template features

Beamer (qkit-beamer)

• Custom color palette (blue, red, yellow, green)
• Bullet styling, itemize / enumerate spacing
• Custom footline with frame numbers and navigation buttons
• Yellow section-break slides
• Multiple authors with affiliations and ORCID
• Short title and short author support
• Callout styling (note, warning)
• Text justification across frames

CV (qkit-pdf)

• LuaLaTeX engine with mathpazo font
• A small Pandoc Lua filter lets you write the CV in mostly-pure markdown via four semantic divs: .cv-entries (italic-key two-col table), .cv-keys (bold-key two-col table), .cv-publications (hanging-indent numbered list), .cv-references (two-column multicols block of .referee subdivs)
• Automatic horizontal rule under every # Section heading
• Fontawesome contact icons in the title header (email, phone, GitHub, web)
• Optional ORCID link via orcidlink
• Right-aligned "Updated: \today" stamp at the end of the document, controlled by updated: true in YAML
• Page footer with author / title on the centre and page / total on the right

Book (qkit Book)

• Multi-file Quarto book project (_quarto.yml with project: type: book)
• Krantz document class (krantz.cls shipped in the scaffold)
• xelatex engine, makeindex, sourcecodepro font for code
• Generic title-page partial with optional ORCID and affiliation; no PhD-thesis specifics
• Optional dedication page (uncomment a block in index.qmd to enable; renders for both PDF and HTML)
• Book-friendly date format (MMMM YYYY → "May 2026")
• Sample chapter scaffold: preface, intro, one part with two chapters, references, one appendix

Paper (qkit Paper)

• Minimalist 12pt article, 1in margins, doublespaced body, one-and-a-half-spaced title block and tables
• Structured-YAML author list with ORCID, email, affiliations, and an optional corresponding: true flag — rendered by a custom title.tex Pandoc partial as Name\textsuperscript{\orcidlink{...}}\thanks{Email: \href{mailto:...}{...}. Address: ...} for each author
• Oxford-comma joining of the author list (A, A and B, or A, B, and C) driven by a Pandoc Lua filter (mark-last-author.lua) that annotates the YAML list with is-first / is-last / next-is-last flags
• Italic subsection headings, period-after-section numbering (1. Introduction), 1.5cm-indented quote env, symmetric display-equation spacing pinned to 12pt on all four \abovedisplayskip / \belowdisplayskip / *shortskip lengths
• "Preliminary draft --- please do not cite without permission" italic subtitle on the same line as the title; the title's \thanks{} acknowledgment footnote sits next to the title text, not the subtitle
• JEL Classification line below the abstract's Keywords
• Footnotes pinned to the bottom of every page via \usepackage[bottom]{footmisc}
• In-paper Appendix block (\appendix + \thesection = Appendix A)
• Separate internet-appendix.qmd with a custom \maketitle redefinition (in preamble-appendix.tex) emitting the "Internet Appendix for / Title / Authors / SUPPLEMENTARY RESULTS" centered title page, plus its own references-appendix.bib
• LaTeX preamble externalised into preamble.tex and preamble-appendix.tex so it can be edited without touching the YAML header
• References on a new page after the Conclusion (and at the end of the Internet Appendix)
• Pandoc citeproc for bibliographies (Chicago author-date by default)
• Body is a self-documenting Quarto tutorial: each section walks through a Quarto/Markdown feature (cross-reference prefixes, labeled equations, theorem environments, citation styles, callouts, knitr table chunks, pipe tables, definition lists, raw {=tex}/{=html} blocks, .content-visible when-format=... conditional content)

Getting help

If you encounter a bug, please file an issue with a minimal reproducible example on GitHub. For questions, email gabriel.cabreraguzman@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk.