Early in January this year, the curious Colin Fay discovered with great surprise that someone managed to insert Clippy (the classic Office Assistant) to the R help page of writexl::write_xlsx()!
Well, whenever I see hacks that are funny or unbelievable, I’d first guess it would be either Jeroen Ooms or Romain Francois — who else could be more creative than them in the R community in terms of hacking skills? :) This time it was the ninja Jeroen. The key was to use \if{html}{} to insert arbitrary HTML code to an R help page.
This morning I learned another amazing hack from Noam Ross, and the hack was even deeper and darker, which used \Sexpr{} inside \if{html}{}. He actually inserted an HTML widget (via DT) to an R help page!
- Update on 2018-08-01
-
I discovered yoni sidi’s
<details>hack.
Donate
As a freelancer (currently working as a contractor) and a dad of three kids, I truly appreciate your donation to support my writing and open-source software development! Your contribution helps me cope with financial uncertainty better, so I can spend more time on producing high-quality content and software. You can make a donation through methods below.
-
Venmo:
@yihui_xie, or Zelle:xie@yihui.name -
Paypal
-
If you have a Paypal account, you can follow the link https://paypal.me/YihuiXie or find me on Paypal via my email
xie@yihui.name. Please choose the payment type as “Family and Friends” (instead of “Goods and Services”) to avoid extra fees. -
If you don’t have Paypal, you may donate through this link via your debit or credit card. Paypal will charge a fee on my side.
-
-
Other ways:
WeChat Pay (微信支付：谢益辉) Alipay (支付宝：谢益辉) 
When sending money, please be sure to add a note “gift” or “donation” if possible, so it won’t be treated as my taxable income but a genuine gift. Needless to say, donation is completely voluntary and I appreciate any amount you can give.
Please feel free to email me if you prefer a different way to give. Thank you very much!
I’ll give back a significant portion of the donations to the open-source community and charities. For the record, I received about $30,000 in total (before tax) in 2024-25, and gave back about $15,000 (after tax).