[R-pkg-devel] Add space between columns in \tabular{} in Rd files.

[Rolf Turner]

On 13/07/19 9:38 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> On 12/07/2019 9:43 p.m., Rolf Turner wrote:
>>
>> This is fussing over a very minor issue, but ... well, I have OCD, I 
>> guess.
>>
>> I've tried adding extra "blank" columns between my real columns (extra
>> \tab's with blank fields) but these have no effect.  The blanks are
>> simply suppressed.  There does not seem to be (perhaps I'm overlooking
>> something) any equivalent in the Rd syntax of \hspace{} in LaTeX.
>>
>> Can anyone suggest any possibilities?
> 
> You can include raw HTML or Latex in the Rd file using the \out{} macro. 
>   See the example in section 2.11 of Writing R Extensions.
> 
> In HTML there are a lot of "entities" for different size spaces, e.g. 
> " ", " ", etc.  You can use "\hspace{}" in LaTeX.
Thank you Duncan!!!  Worked like a charm!

For the possible benefit (???) of others (Duncan knows all this I'm sure):

Since I had to put in a lot of such spaces I defined a macro "\ics" 
("inter column space") and used the syntax:

\tabular{lrllrllr}{
\code{nm1):  \tab \code{n1} \tab \ics \tab \code{nm2}: \tab \code{n2}
              \tab \ics \tab \code{nm3}: \tab \code{n3}\cr
\code{nm4}:  \tab \code{n4} \tab \ics \tab \code{nm5}: \tab \code{n5}
....................
....................
}

I defined the macro "\ics" in ..../man/macros/defns.Rd via:

\newcommand{\icsl}{\out{\hspace*{1em}}}
\newcommand{\icsh}{\out{<a>   </a>}}
\newcommand{\ics}{\ifelse{latex}{\icsl}{\ifelse{html}{\icsh}{ }}}

Took me forever (I being a Bear of Very Little Brain) to get a workable 
syntax, but I finally managed it, and the end result looks fine in both
*.pdf and *.html.  (the pdf seems to need just one em-space whereas the
html needs two.)

Thanks again Duncan.

cheers,

Rolf

--
Honorary Research Fellow
Department of Statistics
University of Auckland
Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276