NEWS.md

In TernTables: Publication-Ready Summary Tables and Statistical Testing for Clinical Research

TernTables 1.6.4

Bug fixes / CRAN compliance

• Removed all uses of <<- in ternD(), ternG(), and ternP(). Counter and tracker variables are now accumulated via a local environment created with new.env(parent = emptyenv()) rather than super-assignment, which avoids unintended side-effects on parent frames (CRAN policy).
• Replaced bare set.seed() inside ternG() with withr::with_seed() so the global RNG state is never modified (CRAN policy). Added withr to Imports.

TernTables 1.6.3

• CRAN resubmission addressing reviewer comments on v1.3.1.
• All \dontrun{} blocks replaced with \donttest{} across all exported functions. Examples that write files to disk use \donttest{} because the 'Word' export operations may exceed 5 seconds on slower machines; no missing software or API keys are required.
• Software and package names now quoted in the Description field of DESCRIPTION per CRAN policy: 'Word', 'Excel', 'tibble', 'officer', 'flextable', 'writexl', 'rstatix'.
• Package-level documentation (?TernTables) updated: normality routing description corrected to four-gate algorithm; .onLoad now explicitly initialises TernTables.line_break_header option.
• val_format() now uses the Unicode plus-minus symbol (±) for consistency with ternG() and ternD() output.
• utils_naming.R: single-word variable names (e.g. age, sex, race) now correctly flow through the abbreviation map and capitalisation rules in .apply_cleaning_rules().

TernTables 1.6.2

• Added odds ratio (OR) support for two-level categorical variables in ternG() (e.g. Male/Female shown with 1.00 (ref.) and computed OR with 95% CI). Previously only Y/N and 0/1 binary variables received ORs.
• Added factor_order = "mixed" option to ternG() and ternD().
• Post-hoc compact letter display (CLD) superscripts implemented in utils_posthoc.R with center-based letter ordering (highest center = "a").
• Fallback to Monte Carlo simulation for Fisher's exact test when the exact algorithm cannot complete due to workspace limits (B = 10,000; seed fixed via getOption("TernTables.seed")).
• Liberalized PHI column name detection in utils_preprocess.R to reduce false positives on common research variable names.

TernTables 1.6.1

• Integrated tern-tables.com web app into all public-facing documentation: README, vignette, and package help page (?TernTables).
• Added URL: and BugReports: fields to DESCRIPTION.

TernTables 1.6.0

• Added ternP(): preprocessing function for raw CSV/XLSX data. Handles string NA conversion, whitespace trimming, empty column and blank row removal, and case normalisation. Hard-stops on PHI column name patterns and unnamed columns with data.
• Added write_cleaning_doc(): writes a 'Word' audit document recording every transformation applied by ternP().
• Added bundled example data tern_colon_messy.csv to inst/extdata/csv/ for use in ternP() examples.
• line_break_header parameter refined: improved behaviour for edge-case column widths in ternG(), ternD(), and word_export().

TernTables 1.5.0

• Added ROBUST normality routing (consider_normality = "ROBUST", now the default). Four-gate algorithm applied per group: (1) n < 3 fail-safe to non-parametric; (2) |skewness| > 2 to non-parametric; (3) all groups n ≥ 30 to parametric via CLT; (4) Shapiro-Wilk p > 0.05 to parametric. Implemented in both ternG() and ternD().

TernTables 1.4.0

• Added ternB(): combines multiple TernTables result tibbles into a single formatted 'Word' document.
• Added table_caption parameter to ternG(), ternD(), and word_export(): places a bold caption above the table in the 'Word' output.
• Added table_footnote parameter to ternG(), ternD(), and word_export(): adds a merged footer row below the table.
• Added Welch ANOVA for 3+ group continuous comparisons (parametric path); previously only Kruskal-Wallis was available for 3+ groups.
• Added line_break_header parameter to ternG(), ternD(), and word_export(): wraps long column headers onto two lines in 'Word' output.
• write_methods_doc() now generates a methods paragraph tailored to ternB() multi-table output.
• Fixed bug where P values were not displaying in three-group comparisons.
• Fixed dynamic bolding/non-bolding of table captions.

TernTables 1.3.1

• Initial CRAN submission.
• ternG(): grouped comparison table for 2- and 3-level group variables, with optional odds ratios (OR_col), normality testing, and post-hoc test framework.
• ternD(): descriptive summary table with no group comparisons.
• word_export(): exports any TernTables tibble to a formatted 'Word' document.
• write_methods_doc(): generates a boilerplate statistical methods paragraph.
• val_format() and val_p_format(): formatting utilities for publication-ready numeric and P value display.

TernTables documentation built on March 26, 2026, 5:09 p.m.