Draw a Tiny Table

Description

The tt function renders a table in different formats with various styling options: HTML, Markdown, LaTeX, Word, PDF, PNG, or Typst. The table can be customized with additional functions:

• style_tt(): style fonts, colors, alignment, etc.

• format_tt(): format numbers, dates, strings, etc.

• group_tt(): row or column group labels.

• save_tt(): save the table to a file or return the table as a string.

• print(): print to a specific format, ex: print(x, “latex”)

• theme_*() functions apply a collection of format-specific or visual transformations to a tinytable.

tinytable attempts to determine the appropriate way to print the table based on interactive use, RStudio availability, and output format in RMarkdown or Quarto documents. Users can call print(x, output=“markdown”) to print the table in a specific format. Alternatively, they can set a global option: options(“tinytable_print_output”=“markdown”)

Usage

tt(
  x,
  digits = get_option("tinytable_tt_digits", default = NULL),
  caption = get_option("tinytable_tt_caption", default = NULL),
  notes = get_option("tinytable_tt_notes", default = NULL),
  width = get_option("tinytable_tt_width", default = NULL),
  height = get_option("tinytable_tt_height", default = NULL),
  theme = get_option("tinytable_tt_theme", default = "default"),
  colnames = get_option("tinytable_tt_colnames", default = TRUE),
  rownames = get_option("tinytable_tt_rownames", default = FALSE),
  escape = get_option("tinytable_tt_escape", default = FALSE),
  ...
)

Arguments

x	A data frame or data table to be rendered as a table.
digits	Number of significant digits to keep for numeric variables. When digits is an integer, tt() calls format_tt(x, digits = digits) before proceeding to draw the table. Note that this will apply all default argument values of format_tt(), such as replacing NA by "". Users who need more control can use the format_tt() function instead.
caption	A string that will be used as the caption of the table. This argument should not be used in Quarto or Rmarkdown documents. In that context, please use the appropriate chunk options.
notes	Notes to append to the bottom of the table. This argument accepts several different inputs: Single string insert a single note: “blah blah” Multiple strings insert multiple notes sequentially: list(“Hello world”, “Foo bar”) A named list inserts a list with the name as superscript: list(“a” = list(“Hello World”)) A named list with positions inserts markers as superscripts inside table cells: list(“a” = list(i = 0:1, j = 2, text = “Hello World”))
width	Table or column width. Single numeric value smaller than or equal to 1 determines the full table width, in proportion of line width. Numeric vector of length equal to the number of columns in x determines the width of each column, in proportion of line width. If the sum of width exceeds 1, each element is divided by sum(width). This makes the table full-width with relative column sizes.
height	Row height in em units. Single numeric value greater than zero that determines the row height spacing.
theme	Function or string. String: grid, revealjs, rotate, striped, void Function: Applied to the tinytable object.
colnames	Logical. If FALSE, column names are omitted.
rownames	Logical. If TRUE, rownames are included as the first column
escape	Logical. If TRUE, escape special characters in the table. Equivalent to format_tt(tt(x), escape = TRUE).
…	Additional arguments are ignored

Value

An object of class tt representing the table.

The table object has S4 slots which hold information about the structure of the table. For example, the table@group_index_i slot includes the row indices for grouping labels added by group_tt().

Warning: Relying on or modifying the contents of these slots is strongly discouraged. Their names and contents could change at any time, and the tinytable developers do not consider changes to the internal structure of the output object to be a "breaking change" for versioning or changelog purposes.

Dependencies

• .pdf output requires a full LaTeX installation on the local computer.

• .png output requires the webshot2 package.

• .html self-contained files require the base64enc package.

LaTeX preamble

tinytable uses the tabularray package from your LaTeX distribution to draw tables. tabularray, in turn, uses the special tblr, talltblr, and longtblr environments.

When rendering a document from Quarto or Rmarkdown directly to PDF, tinytable will populate the LaTeX preamble automatically with all the required packages. For standalone LaTeX documents, these commands should be inserted in the preamble manually:

Note: Your document will fail to compile to PDF in Quarto if you enable caching and you use tinytable due to missing LaTeX headers. To avoid this problem, set the option #| cache: false for the chunk(s) where you use tinytable.

\usepackage{tabularray}
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{rotating}
\usepackage[normalem]{ulem}
\UseTblrLibrary{booktabs}
\UseTblrLibrary{siunitx}
\newcommand{\tinytableTabularrayUnderline}[1]{\underline{#1}}
\newcommand{\tinytableTabularrayStrikeout}[1]{\sout{#1}}
\NewTableCommand{\tinytableDefineColor}[3]{\definecolor{#1}{#2}{#3}}

Word and Markdown limitations

Markdown and Word tables only support these styles: italic, bold, strikeout. The width argument is also unavailable Moreover, the style_tt() function cannot be used to style headers inserted by the group_tt() function; instead, you should style the headers directly in the header definition using markdown syntax: group_tt(i = list(“italic header” = 2)). These limitations are due to the fact that there is no markdown syntax for the other options, and that we create Word documents by converting a markdown table to .docx via the Pandoc software.

Tabulator (interactive tables)

Experimental Feature: The Tabulator.js integration is experimental and the API may change in future versions.

The Tabulator.js library provides powerful interactive table features including sorting, filtering, pagination, data export, and real-time editing capabilities. This theme customizes the appearance and behavior of Tabulator tables.

Features:

• Sorting and filtering of all columns

• Pagination with configurable page sizes

• Search functionality across all columns

• Multiple CSS themes and custom styling

• Real-time data export options

• Accessibility features (ARIA compliant)

Limitations:

• Limited style_tt() support (only align and alignv)

• Row-based formatting (format_tt() with i argument) not supported

• Global stylesheets affect all tables in multi-table documents

• Date formatting uses Luxon tokens, not R’s strptime format

• Boolean formatting requires format_tt() with bool argument for custom display

Global options

Options can be set with options() and change the default behavior of tinytable. For example:

options(tinytable_tt_digits = 4)
tt(head(iris))

You can set options in a script or via .Rprofile. Note: be cautious with .Rprofile settings as they may affect reproducibility.

Default values for function arguments

Nearly all of the package’s functions retrieve their default values from global options. This allows you to set defaults once and apply them to all tables without needing to specify them each time. For example, to fix the the digits argument of the tt() function globally, call:

options(tinytable_tt_digits = 4)

In addition, some more specific options are available to control the behavior of the package in specific contexts.

HTML

• tinytable_html_mathjax: Insert MathJax scripts (warning: may conflict if MathJax is loaded elsewhere)

• tinytable_html_portable: Insert base64 encoded images directly in HTML for plot_tt()

• tinytable_html_engine: Default HTML engine (default: "bootstrap"). Set to "tabulator" to use interactive tables by default in HTML documents instead of static Bootstrap tables.

PDF

• tinytable_pdf_clean: Delete temporary and log files

• tinytable_pdf_engine: Choose between "xelatex", "pdflatex", "lualatex"

Color processing

• tinytable_color_name_normalization: Enable/disable automatic color name processing (default: TRUE).

When enabled, R color names recognized by col2rgb() are converted to hex format for consistent rendering across HTML, LaTeX, and Typst formats. If R color conversion fails, LaTeX color names are used as fallback. Colors explicitly supplied as hex values with "#" prefix are passed through unchanged. Set to FALSE to disable processing and pass color names unchanged.

Quarto

The format_tt(quarto=TRUE) argument enables Quarto data processing with some limitations:

1. The LaTeX macro may not process references and markdown as expected

2. Quarto processing may conflict with tinytable styling/formatting

Options:

• tinytable_quarto_disable_processing: Disable Quarto cell processing

• tinytable_print_rstudio_notebook: Display tables "inline" or in "viewer" for RStudio notebooks

• tinytable_quarto_figure: Control Typst figure environment in Quarto

Example of Quarto-specific code in cells:

x <- data.frame(Math = "x^2^", Citation = "@Lovelace1842")
fn <- function(z) sprintf("<span data-qmd='%s'></span>", z)
tt(x) |> format_tt(i = 1, fn = fn)

For more details on Quarto table processing: https://quarto.org/docs/authoring/tables.html#disabling-quarto-table-processing

Examples

library("tinytable")

library(tinytable)
x <- mtcars[1:4, 1:5]

tt(x)

mpg	cyl	disp	hp	drat
21.0	6	160	110	3.90
21.0	6	160	110	3.90
22.8	4	108	93	3.85
21.4	6	258	110	3.08

tt(x,
  theme = "striped",
  width = 0.5,
  caption = "Data about cars."
)

Data about cars.

mpg	cyl	disp	hp	drat
21.0	6	160	110	3.90
21.0	6	160	110	3.90
22.8	4	108	93	3.85
21.4	6	258	110	3.08

tt(x, notes = "Hello World!")

mpg	cyl	disp	hp	drat
Hello World!
21.0	6	160	110	3.90
21.0	6	160	110	3.90
22.8	4	108	93	3.85
21.4	6	258	110	3.08

fn <- list(i = 0:1, j = 2, text = "Hello World!")
tab <- tt(x, notes = list("*" = fn))
print(tab, "latex")

\begin{table}
\centering
\begin{talltblr}[         %% tabularray outer open
entry=none,label=none,
note{*}={Hello World!},
]                     %% tabularray outer close
{                     %% tabularray inner open
colspec={Q[]Q[]Q[]Q[]Q[]},
}                     %% tabularray inner close
\toprule
mpg & cyl\textsuperscript{*} & disp & hp & drat \\ \midrule %% TinyTableHeader
21.0 & 6\textsuperscript{*} & 160 & 110 & 3.90 \\
21.0 & 6 & 160 & 110 & 3.90 \\
22.8 & 4 & 108 & 93 & 3.85 \\
21.4 & 6 & 258 & 110 & 3.08 \\
\bottomrule
\end{talltblr}
\end{table} 

k <- data.frame(x = c(0.000123456789, 12.4356789))
tt(k, digits = 2)

x
0.00012
12.43568