Creating, updating & maintaining the statquotes data base

library(statquotes)

statquotes items can be read and parsed by the inst/readQuotes() function in either text (.txt) or LaTeX (.tex) format. These are saved in the inst/quotes.csv file, which is then also saved in data/quotes.RData, the main data file used in the package. The function readQuotes() is not yet exported.

LaTeX format

statquotes originally arose from a LaTeX file, quotes.tex that I used to collect interesting quotations related to statistics, data visualization, history, software and other topics. This was designed to be a collection I could search, then copy/paste an appropriate one into a working LaTeX document. The format of quotes was designed to use the LaTeX epigraph package:

\epigraph{You can see a lot, just by looking.}{Yogi Berra}
\epigraph{Every picture tells a story.}{Rod Stewart, 1971}
\epigraph{A picture is worth a thousand words.}{F. Barnard, 1927}

Each quote has some text and a source attribution, and so could be displayed in a document something like

You can see a lot, just by looking. — Yogi Berra

Overtime, I wanted to categorize these by topic and subtopic, so \section{} and \subsection{} were introduced into the quotes.tex file.

This results in what is the canonical form for a quotations file in LaTeX format.

\section{Data visualization}
\epigraph{You can see a lot, just by looking.}{Yogi Berra}

\subsection{Pictures}
\epigraph{Every picture tells a story.}{Rod Stewart, 1971}
\epigraph{A picture is worth a thousand words.}{F. Barnard, 1927}
...

Text format

The following lines illustrate the text format, similar in most respects to the output of the fortunes package

%% Some sample quotes
%  ... to illustrate the format

## Data visualization
You can see a lot, just by looking.
--- Yogi Berra

### Pictures
Every picture tells a story.
--- Rod Stewart, 1971

A picture is worth a thousand words.
--- F. Barnard, 1927

In this format: