rr-markdowngtsummarygt

gt table tab spanner too long for table when knitting to pdf

I've been trying to create tables using the gtsummary and gt packages in R.

When knitting to pdf in R Markdown, the tab spanner is too long for the table. This is not a problem when knitting to html. Not sure what's going on or how to fix it! p-values going off the page!

Reproducible example:

library(tidyverse)
library(gt)
library(gtsummary)

test <- function(data, variable, by,...) {
  a = c(1,2,3)
  names(a) = c("A", "B", "C")
  as_tibble_row(a)
}

age = rnorm(100)
group = rbinom(100, 1, 0.5)
data= as.data.frame(cbind(age, group))

#Creates table
data %>%
  tbl_summary(by=group) %>%
  add_overall(last=T) %>%
  add_stat(fns = list(everything()~test), location = everything() ~ "label") %>%
  as_gt() %>% 
  gt::cols_width("label" ~ pct(25), stat_0 ~ pct(55/3), stat_1 ~ pct(55/3), stat_2 ~ pct(55/3), "A" ~ pct(20/3), "B" ~ pct(20/3), "C" ~ pct(20/3)) %>%
  tab_spanner(label = "p-values",columns = c("A", "B", "C"))
Solution

  • This seems to be a bug, inspecting the LaTeX

    \begin{table}[t]
\fontsize{12.0pt}{14.4pt}\selectfont
\begin{tabular*}{\linewidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}}>{\raggedright\arraybackslash}p{\dimexpr 0.25\linewidth -2\tabcolsep-1.5\arrayrulewidth}>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{\dimexpr 0.18\linewidth -2\tabcolsep-1.5\arrayrulewidth}>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{\dimexpr 0.18\linewidth -2\tabcolsep-1.5\arrayrulewidth}>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{\dimexpr 0.18\linewidth -2\tabcolsep-1.5\arrayrulewidth}>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{\dimexpr 0.07\linewidth -2\tabcolsep-1.5\arrayrulewidth}>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{\dimexpr 0.07\linewidth -2\tabcolsep-1.5\arrayrulewidth}>{\centering\arraybackslash}p{\dimexpr 0.07\linewidth -2\tabcolsep-1.5\arrayrulewidth}}
\toprule                                                          ** HERE **
 &  &  &  & \multicolumn{3}{>{\centering\arraybackslash}m{\dimexpr 0.62\linewidth -2\tabcolsep-1.5\arrayrulewidth}}{p-values} \\ 
\cmidrule(lr){5-7}
\textbf{Characteristic} & \textbf{0}\\
N = 49\textsuperscript{\textit{1}} & \textbf{1}\\
N = 51\textsuperscript{\textit{1}} & \textbf{Overall}\\
N = 100\textsuperscript{\textit{1}} & A & B & C \\ 
\midrule\addlinespace[2.5pt]
age & 0.03 (-0.45, 0.75) & 0.21 (-0.37, 0.63) & 0.14 (-0.40, 0.67) & 1.00 & 2.00 & 3.00 \\ 
\bottomrule
\end{tabular*}
\begin{minipage}{\linewidth}
\textsuperscript{\textit{1}}Median (Q1, Q3)\\
\end{minipage}
\end{table}

    with my limitted skills I can still see that the multicolumn spans 0.62\linewidth which is 62 % of the writable page, which is why it looks so weird! You can fix this, but it's messy and hacky by replacing dimexpr 0.62 with dimexpr 0.21 using gsub. It should be best, to open a bug report about this issue.

    Code

    ---
title: "Untitled"
output: pdf_document
date: "2025-05-16"
---

```{r setup, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)
```

```{r cars, warning=FALSE,echo=FALSE}
library(tidyverse)
library(gt)
library(gtsummary)

test <- function(data, variable, by,...) {
  a = c(1,2,3)
  names(a) = c("A", "B", "C")
  as_tibble_row(a)
}

age = rnorm(100)
group = rbinom(100, 1, 0.5)
data= as.data.frame(cbind(age, group))

#Creates table
t <- data %>%
  tbl_summary(by=group) %>%
  add_overall(last=T) %>%
  add_stat(fns = list(everything()~test), location = everything() ~ "label") %>%
  as_gt() %>% 
  gt::cols_width("label" ~ pct(25), stat_0 ~ pct(55/3), stat_1 ~ pct(55/3), stat_2 ~ pct(55/3), "A" ~ pct(20/3), "B" ~ pct(20/3), "C" ~ pct(20/3)) %>%
  tab_spanner(label = "p-values",columns = c("A", "B", "C")) %>%
  gt::as_latex() 

t <- gsub("dimexpr 0.62","dimexpr 0.21",t)

```

```{r, results='asis'}

t

```

    giving

    out