Padding unit of measurement

[MattKumar]

Hello,

I'm trying to use flextable to construct a table on a pre-formatted data frame. The data frame itself is a table that's been generated in other software and imported into R. As such, it has most of the formatting, including indentation, already embedded in the columns.

Is there a straight forward way to preserve this in flextable? I haven't found one, so my approach has been to use the padding() to add indentation to the rows that require it. What I can't seem to figure out is the unit of measurement padding() takes.

My workaround involves counting the number of blanks on a given row, and using that as the padding factor, since my data frame is pre-formatted. However, it's clear that these are two different units of measurement.

Hope the reprex below will help clarify.

suppressPackageStartupMessages(
  {
    library(dplyr)
    library(janitor)
    library(flextable)
    library(stringr)
  }
)
#> Warning: package 'dplyr' was built under R version 3.6.3
#> Warning: package 'janitor' was built under R version 3.6.3
#> Warning: package 'stringr' was built under R version 3.6.3

#an example of my pre-formatted table - a single column with indentations preserved
df_demo <- data.frame(Variable = c('Fruit','   Apple', '   Orange'), stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

#no indentation preserved - this seems to be expected
df_demo %>% 
  flextable()

#my work around - count number of blank spaces
df_demo <- df_demo %>%
            mutate(n_spaces = str_count(Variable, pattern=" "))

#use this as "padding" in flextable - it's clear the padding unit is not equal to the number of characters - any idea what it is?
df_demo %>%
  flextable() %>%
  padding(j=1, padding.left = df_demo$n_spaces)

#if I add a multiplier, it looks a bit better - but i don't want to guess and make this programmatic as possible
df_demo %>%
  flextable() %>%
  padding(j=1, padding.left = 3 * df_demo$n_spaces)

^{Created on 2020-11-12 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)}

If there are any insights or suggestions to differing approaches, please chime in! Also, this was my first reprex! Awesome package!

Cheers,
Matt

[technocrat]

Thanks for the reprex, sorry I can't offer one in return (it chokes for some reason; the ending error is bogus). Eyeballing with various padding.left values, it appear that the unit is %age of column width

suppressPackageStartupMessages(
    {
        library(dplyr)
        library(janitor)
        library(flextable)
        library(stringr)
    }
)

df_demo <- data.frame(Variable = c('Fruit','   Apple', '   Orange'), stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

df_demo %>%
    flextable() %>%
    padding(j=1, padding.left = 10) %>%
    padding(j=1,i=1,padding.left = 0)
#> Error in knit_print.flextable(x, ...): unsupported format for flextable rendering:markdown_strict

^{Created on 2020-11-12 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)}

[MattKumar]

@technocrat

df_demo <- data.frame(Variable = c('Fruit','   Apple', '   Orange'), stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

df_demo %>%
    flextable() %>%
    padding(j=1, padding.left = 10) %>%
    padding(j=1,i=1,padding.left = 0)

Hi technocrat,

Thank you for the quick and insightful reply! I think I see this now and will be helpful in planning for projects that involving styling + indentation.

Cheers,
Matt