cols_align_decimal with Latex fails

[dropsplash]

hello,

thanks for your work.

cols_align_decimal fails with latex

output
LaTeX Error: Unicode character   (U+2007)
not set up for use with LaTeX.

Any clue how to solve it?

Thanks

[olivroy]

Hi @dropsplash ! Thanks for the report.

Could you share a minimal reproducible example? I can't reproduce this.

I tried this with gt 0.11.1 and Quarto 1.6.40 and it works as expected

---
title: test
format: pdf
---

```{r}
library(gt)
```

```{r}
dplyr::tibble(
  char = LETTERS[1:9],
  num = c(1.2, -33.52, 9023.2, -283.527, NA, 0.401, -123.1, NA, 41)
) |>
  gt() |>
  fmt_number(
    columns = num,
    decimals = 3,
    drop_trailing_zeros = TRUE
  ) |>
  cols_align_decimal()
```

[dropsplash]

Hello,

version

• R version 4.4.2 (2024-10-31)
• Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20
• Running under: macOS Sequoia 15.3.1
• gt_0.11.1
• quarto 1.6.40
• pdfTeX 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.26 (TeX Live 2024)
• kpathsea version 6.4.0

here the example

---

title: test
format: pdf
pdf-engine: pdflatex

library(gt)

dplyr::tibble(
  char = LETTERS[1:9],
  num = c(1.2, -33.52, 9023.2, -283.527, NA, 0.401, -123.1, NA, 41)
) |>
  gt() |>
  fmt_number(
    columns = num,
    decimals = 3,
    drop_trailing_zeros = TRUE
  ) |>
 cols_align_decimal(dec_mark = ".")

The issue is about unicode char for aligning around decimal.
Xetex engine for latex seems to solve it, but unfortunately, I can't use it because of some Latex packages that do not work with it, and I must stick with pdflatex engine.

Here the output

compilation failed- error
LaTeX Error: Unicode character   (U+2007)
not set up for use with LaTeX.

See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type H for immediate help.
...

l.237 A &  
   1.2   \

If I remove '|>cols_align_decimal(dec_mark = ".")' it works but not exactly as I would

Thanks again for your help and your great work.

[olivroy]

Ok, I can reproduce this now.

It seems that the engine has trouble dealing with the \U02007 character (a space)
This is probably an issue that occurs with older versions of gt as well as nothing significant seems to have changed since

cols_align_decimal() was added in this PR #1058

It uses \U02007 for padding and pdflatex doesn't seem to like it.

https://bookdown.org/yihui/rmarkdown-cookbook/latex-unicode.html

This is the internal function where this is added. Unfortunately, I don't think this will receive a quick fix on the gt side..

gt/R/cols_align_decimal.R

Lines 174 to 257 in d99a57e

	align_to_char <- function(x, align_at = ".") {
	na_x_vals <- x == "NA"
	no_a_char <- !grepl(align_at, x, fixed = TRUE) & !grepl("[0-9]", x)
	has_t_dec <- grepl("[0-9]\\.$", x)
	x_no_align <- na_x_vals | no_a_char
	x_str <- as.character(x)
	split_x <- strsplit(x[!x_no_align], align_at, fixed = TRUE)
	x_lhs <-
	unlist(
	lapply(
	split_x,
	FUN = function(x) x[1]
	)
	)
	x_rhs <-
	unlist(
	lapply(
	split_x,
	FUN = function(x) paste0(x[-1], collapse = align_at)
	)
	)
	x_piece_lhs <-
	paste0(
	strrep("\U02007", max(nchar(x_lhs)) - nchar(x_lhs)),
	x_lhs
	)
	x_piece_rhs <-
	paste0(
	x_rhs,
	strrep("\U02007", max(nchar(x_rhs)) - nchar(x_rhs))
	)
	for (i in seq_along(x_piece_lhs)) {
	if (grepl("[^0-9]$", x_piece_lhs[i])) {
	extracted <- str_single_extract(x_piece_lhs[i], "[^0-9]+$")
	n_char_extracted <- nchar(extracted)
	x_piece_lhs[i] <- gsub(extracted, "", x_piece_lhs[i], fixed = TRUE)
	x_piece_rhs[i] <- paste0(extracted, x_piece_rhs[i])
	x_piece_rhs[i] <-
	gsub(
	paste0(strrep("\U02007", n_char_extracted), "$"),
	"",
	x_piece_rhs[i]
	)
	}
	}
	x_align <- paste(x_piece_lhs, x_piece_rhs, sep = align_at)
	x_align_parens <- grepl("\\(.+?\\)", x_align)
	if (grepl(align_at, paste(x[!x_no_align], collapse = "|"), fixed = TRUE)) {
	x_align[nchar(x_rhs) == 0 & !grepl(align_at, x[!x_no_align], fixed = TRUE)] <-
	sub(align_at, " ", x_align[nchar(x_rhs) == 0], fixed = TRUE)
	x_align[x_align_parens] <- paste0(x_align[x_align_parens], "\U000A0")
	} else {
	x_align[nchar(x_rhs) == 0 & !grepl(align_at, x[!x_no_align], fixed = TRUE)] <-
	sub(align_at, "", x_align[nchar(x_rhs) == 0], fixed = TRUE)
	x_align[!x_align_parens] <- paste0(x_align[!x_align_parens], "\U000A0")
	}
	x_str[!x_no_align] <- x_align
	x_str
	}