r - How can I write special characters in RMarkdown latex documents?

Question

I am trying ot write a paper in RMarkdown pdf. But I dont know how to use special characters like "?, ?, ?, ü, ?". Those characters are present in Turkish. I can easily use them in Latex using e.g. u{g} – ?, c{c} – ?, ”{u} – ü, {i} – ?, etc.

Could you please tell how can I do the same in RMarkdown?

And where can I find some Rmarkdown paper or book templates?

Answer 1

HTML codes for Turkish characters will work (example from wikipedia):

---
title: "My doc"
output: pdf_document
---

HTML      char  detail                            anglicized
-------   --    ------------------------------    ---
Ğ   ?       Uppercase "G" with breve accent   gh1
İ     ?     Uppercase dotted "I"2               i (as in "tree")
Ş     ?     Uppercase "S" with cedilla          sh
ğ     ?     Lowercase "g" with breve accent   gh1
ı     ?     Lowercase dotless "i"3              ou (as in "in")
ş     ?     Lowercase "s" with cedilla          sh
-------   --    -------------------------------   --

Which renders the PDF like this:

For article templates, see the rticles package, or make your own

For book templates, have a look at pandoc ebook, gitbook and bookdown

---

This xelatex option I initially suggested will not work for Turkish characters:

The xelatex engine is recommended for this kind of thing. Then you can access your system fonts with the mainfont argument:

---
title: "My doc"
output:
  pdf_document:
    latex_engine: xelatex
mainfont: "name of your system font that has all those characters"
---

PDF output will be in the font you specify. 

Just type as normal with no special codes.