In haozhu233/kableExtra: Construct Complex Table with 'kable' and Pipe Syntax

Before kableExtra 1.0, we have a function called kable_as_image, which can transform a LaTeX tables to an image and include it in an rmarkdown document. Starting from kableExtra 1.0, we will split this function into two pieces: save_kable and as_image. save_kable will save any LaTeX and HTML tables to any format (html, png, jpg, pdf etc.). The output format will be defined by the file extension of the output file name. Here are a few examples.

# not evaluating
library(kableExtra)

kable(mtcars[1:5, ], "html") %>%
  kable_styling("striped") %>%
  row_spec(1, color = "red") %>%
  save_kable("inst/test.pdf")

kable(mtcars, "latex") %>%
  kable_styling(latex_options = "striped") %>%
  save_kable("inst/test.png")

Feature Dependencies

To get it work, you need to make sure you have the following things installed.

install.packages("magick")
install.packages("webshot2")

In the end, please make sure you can use magick::read_image() function properly for a PDF. On some system (not only windows), it's possible that GhostScript was not setup properly so even if you have magick installed, magick::read_image() still cannot read PDF properly. That said, although save_kable and as_image provide really attractive feature, they may not work on every computer.

Turn your tables into images for cross-formating support

kableExtra only supports HTML and LaTeX. One way to get it work with Word is to render the table as_image. This example below shows you how to render a LaTeX table in HTML document. Same rules applies when you use them in rmarkdown::word_document.

library(kableExtra)

kable(mtcars, "latex", booktabs = T) %>%
  kable_styling(latex_options = c("striped", "scale_down")) %>%
  row_spec(1, color = "red") %>%
  as_image()

You can also specify either width or height of the image. The image will be scaled properly. The units are in inches.

kable(mtcars, "latex", booktabs = T) %>%
  kable_styling(latex_options = c("striped", "scale_down")) %>%
  row_spec(1, color = "red") %>%
  as_image(width = 8)

as_image also works for HTML tables. It means that you can also put in a bootstrap flavored table (image) in Word or PDF.

kable(mtcars, "html") %>%
  kable_styling("striped") %>%
  row_spec(1, color = "red") %>%
  as_image(width = 4)

Note that, by default, as_image saves to an temp file, which works for normal rmarkdown. However if you are using things like xaringan, which can't be a standalone html, you can specify the file option in as_image be the path you need, eg. "img/something.png"

haozhu233/kableExtra documentation built on April 13, 2024, 6:49 p.m.