Adjust spacing between text and chunk output in a R Markdown PDF document

Question

I'm having trouble understanding how to control spacing between the text and chunk output in a R Markdown PDF document. Below is an example of a document:

---
output: pdf_document

---
\setlength\lineskip{0pt}
\begin{center}
Random Text
\end{center}

```{r echo = FALSE, message=FALSE}
library(tidyverse)
p1 <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = row.names(mtcars), mpg)) +
        geom_bar(stat = "identity") +
        theme(panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black", fill=NA, size=1),
              plot.margin=grid::unit(c(0,0,0,0), "mm")) +
              coord_flip()

p1
```

What is the best approach to remove the space between the text "Random Text" and the chunk output so "Random Text" sits flush with the black border of the chart.

Secondly, if I wanted space of 1cm between "Random Text" and the black border of the chart how would I do that?

Thanks

Answer 1

Not sure why you would want this, but you can locally change \\parskip :

\begingroup
\parskip=0pt
\begin{center}
Random Text
\end{center}

```{r echo = FALSE, message=FALSE}
library(tidyverse)
p1 <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = row.names(mtcars), mpg)) +
        geom_bar(stat = "identity") +
        theme(panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black", fill=NA, size=1),
              plot.margin=grid::unit(c(0,0,0,0), "mm")) +
              coord_flip()

p1
```
\endgroup