Creating PDF Version of Slidify Presentations

README.md

This gist consists of a makefile and a script that can automate the creation of PDFs from Slidify generated HTML slides. The script assumes that the makefile and the script makepdf.js are in the same directory as the Rmd file. The makepdf.js script uses casperjs, a very useful utility to automate tasks that require browser interaction. You may follow the installation instructions on the casperjs website, to make sure that you have all the dependencies correctly installed before trying this out.

makefile

DELAY = 1000

RMD_FILE   =  $(wildcard *.Rmd)
HTML_FILE  = $(patsubst %.Rmd, %.html, $(RMD_FILES))
PDF_FILE   = $(patsubst %.html, %.pdf, $(HTML_FILES))

pdf: $(PDF_FILE)
html: $(HTML_FILE)
all: pdf html



%.pdf: %.html
  casperjs makepdf.js $< $@ $(DELAY)

%.html: %.Rmd
  cd $(dir $<) && Rscript -e "slidify::slidify('index.Rmd')" && cd ..

makepdf.js

var casper = require('casper').create({viewportSize:{width:1500,height:1000}});
var args = casper.cli.args;
var imgfile = (args[1] || Math.random().toString(36).slice(2))
casper.start(args[0], function() {
  this.wait(args[2], function(){
    this.captureSelector(imgfile, "slides");
  });
});
 
casper.run();

How do I implement this? I have a slidify presentation with some rCharts plots in it. When I press the knitter button it renders automatically to HTML. How can I use this to export my presentation to PDF? Is this the only way? Thanks.

Really like this information thank you very much, I am a novice so took me a minute to figure out how to call the script and make it work, you may want to add that to this.