Running the display function on linux server throws an error message " xdg-open: no method available for opening"

[sh456]

On running the following code on R server,

dat <- data.frame(
col = "CRAN website", href = "https://cran.r-project.org",
stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
ft <- flextable(dat)
ft <- display(
ft, col_key = "col", pattern = "# {{mylink}}",
formatters = list(mylink ~ hyperlink_text(href, col) )
)
ft

I get the following error message: xdg-open: no method available for opening "https://cran.r-project.org"
So I decide to check the desktop environment set and I run the following command on the terminal:

xdg-settings get default-web-browser

But I get the following exception:
xdg-settings: unknown desktop environment

I would like to insert hyperlink text in word doc and hence I am using the hypertext_link function available in flextable package. But I get the above exception when I run the code.

The version of flextable installed on server is 0.4.6 and version of officer is 0.3.2.
Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks!

[technocrat]

The server version is intended to be used from a separate laptop or desktop. What are you doing differently?

[sh456]

I am using it from a laptop.
I am running R scripts from command line on Linux

[sh456]

NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server"
VERSION="7.5 (Maipo)"

[technocrat]

Ok, thanks. So, this has nothing to do with RStudio and the creation of dat and conversion of the flextable works.

library(flextable)
(dat <- data.frame(
  col = "CRAN website", href = "https://cran.r-project.org",
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE))
#>            col                       href
#> 1 CRAN website https://cran.r-project.org

(ft <- flextable(dat))
ft <- display(
  ft, col_key = "col", pattern = "# {{mylink}}",
  formatters = list(mylink ~ hyperlink_text(href, col) )
)
#> Error in display(ft, col_key = "col", pattern = "# {{mylink}}", formatters = list(mylink ~ : could not find function "display"

but I choke here because I don't know where display() comes from.

[sh456]

@technocrat

display

Display is a function in the package Flextable version 0.4.6

[technocrat]

It’s no longer in the current version 0.8.3.

[andresrcs]

With those specific package versions your code works on Posit Cloud (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS) so I think this is a problem with a system library that is specific to your Linux distribution, sadly I don't have access to an RHEL system to further investigate.