---
title: "A Guided Tour of rtables - Intermediate"
subtitle: Contributed by Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine
date: "2025-06-17"
author:
- Gabriel Becker
- Dan Hofstaedter
output:
    rmarkdown::html_document:
        theme: "spacelab"
        highlight: "kate"
        toc: true
        toc_float: true
vignette: >
  %\VignetteIndexEntry{A Guided Tour of rtables - Intermediate}
  %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8}
  %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown}
editor_options:
  markdown:
      wrap: 72
  chunk_output_type: console
---

```{r, include = FALSE}
suggested_dependent_pkgs <- c("dplyr")
knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>",
  eval = all(vapply(
    suggested_dependent_pkgs,
    requireNamespace,
    logical(1),
    quietly = TRUE
  ))
)
```

```{r, echo=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(comment = "#")
```


# Scope and Audience

Now that we have an understanding of how the `rtables` framework
behaves mechanically from a user perspective, our next step is to
build up intuition for how to leverage `rtables`' flexibility to
create table outputs that go beyond simple straightforward structures.

This portion of the guide is intended for users with a reasonable
grasp of what the individual layouting instructions do by default who
want to learn how to combine and customize their behavior to achieve
complex structured tables when a library of suitable analysis, group
summary, and split functions is already available. It is a good fit
for users looking to leverage, e.g., `tern` or `junco` to create tables
without writing custom functions themselves.

Taking full control of tabulation behavior by creating our own
functions, and understanding the layouting engine's default behavior
will be covered in the upcoming advanced and introductory portions of
this guide, respectively. In the meantime we refer readers looking for
such content to the wide array of existing vignettes and documentation
available beyond this guided tour.



# Chapters

- [Translating Shells To
  Layouts](./guided_intermediate_translating_shells.html) -
  Identifying key structural features in a table shell and mapping
  them to rtables concepts
- [Identifying Required Analysis
  Behavior](./guided_intermediate_afun_reqs.html) - Reasoning about
  analysis behaviors and choosing an `afun`
- [Identifying Required Faceting
  Behavior](./guided_intermediate_split_reqs.html) - Reasoning about
  faceting and choosing a split function