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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

tabular 0.3.2

Minor improvements and bug fixes

  • A check_latex() unit test that verifies TinyTeX resolution off the PATH now carries skip_on_cran(), so it no longer errors on CRAN machines that expose a TinyTeX root without a functional TeX at it (the CRAN macOS arm64 check). Package code is unchanged.

tabular 0.3.1

CRAN release: 2026-07-20

Improvements

  • as_grid() and emit() are 11-24% faster on long tables across every backend: cell inline-markup ASTs are parsed once per distinct string, style layers extract their overrides once per layer instead of per cell, subgroup splitting / decimal alignment / pagination keys are single-pass, XML/HTML escaping is vectorised, and body rows are assembled without quadratic append.

New features

  • preset(font_family = ) generic chains ("mono" / "serif" / "sans") gained the URW/Nimbus Core-35 clone (Nimbus Mono PS / Nimbus Roman / Nimbus Sans) between the PostScript name and the Liberation face, so the default still renders as Courier / Times / Helvetica on Linux images that ship only the ghostscript fonts (and whose Type 1 Courier the Typst compiler cannot read); all links are metric-compatible, so layout is unchanged wherever the chain resolves.

  • emit() to .tex, .typ, and PDF now re-expresses plain group-separator blank rows as discardable space (a white tabularray hline band on LaTeX, a row-gutter entry on Typst), so a page never ends on a stray blank line above the repeated closing rule when the native page break lands at a group boundary, matching how Word renders the RTF/DOCX output; mid-page the gap keeps the blank row’s exact height, and styled or ruled tables (rowrules, side frames, striped separators) keep the real blank row.

  • preset(decimal_metrics = "afm") now measures a font_family with no bundled metric table (e.g. a system-installed face such as Courier 10 Pitch) through a temporary graphics device, so decimal alignment and width measurement stay exact whenever the host can resolve the font; the Times-fallback fidelity warning now fires only when that device probe also fails, and the probe can be disabled with options(tabular.device_metrics = FALSE).

  • check_typst() is a new diagnostic that audits the Typst PDF toolchain: which typst binary is discoverable (standalone typst, or the copy bundled inside Quarto), whether its version meets the 0.11 floor, and which families of the configured font chain the compiler can see; the chain is a fallback chain, so the check reports ready as soon as any family resolves and names the face PDFs render in. emit() warns after a Typst compile only when a family the user explicitly named cannot be found — missing members of the built-in cross-OS fallback chains substitute silently, matching the other backends.

  • emit() gained a Typst backend: emit(spec, "out.typ") writes a standalone Typst document (native #table with repeating table.header/table.footer, page chrome via #set page() counters, native per-cell borders), and emit(spec, "out.pdf", format = "typst") compiles it through the standalone typst binary or Quarto’s bundled copy, so PDF output no longer requires any TeX installation. The table centres on the page, the running header and footer anchor to the body edges (the header grows upward into the top margin, the footer downward, tracking the configured margins), and paginate()’s keep-with-next mask is enforced through unbreakable rowspans in a hidden zero-width column.

  • emit() on a bare .pdf target now selects its compile engine by probing the machine, LaTeX first: a usable TeX (resolved the way the compile resolves it, and not frozen on a pre-2023 TeX Live kernel) keeps the historical LaTeX path byte-stable, a discoverable typst binary takes over otherwise, and with neither engine the call aborts up front naming both remedies; format = "latex" / format = "typst" pick the engine explicitly.

  • check_latex() now reports the TeX Live release year of the active xelatex and fails the check when it predates 2023, the first release whose LaTeX kernel (2022-11-01) can load the bundled tabularray; the report and the emit() PDF compile error both explain the update / user-space TinyTeX remedy for images frozen on an old TeX Live.

  • check_latex() and the PDF pre-compile staging now resolve TeX the same way the compile does, preferring a TinyTeX at the standard root (installed by either tinytex::install_tinytex() or quarto install tinytex) over the PATH, so the diagnostic can no longer describe a different TeX than the one emit() actually runs; remediation hints name the quarto install tinytex route, which downloads from GitHub and therefore works behind proxies that block CTAN.

  • cols() accepts a bare string as label shorthand (soc = "SOC / PT" is soc = col_spec(label = "SOC / PT"), including glue interpolation and the deferred {.name} token) and a .hide argument that hides the named columns in one flat vector.

  • paginate() keep-together protection on the natively-paginating backends (RTF, DOCX) now emits edge-only row glue instead of gluing a whole fitting block, so a block that fits a fresh page but not the space left on the current one no longer bumps wholesale and strands a near-empty page; widow/orphan floors count content rows only, with trailing blank spacer rows still riding with their block.

  • paginate(keep_together = ) now accepts any column of data (including hidden block-key columns), not only usage = "group" columns.

Breaking changes

  • col_spec() no longer has usage, group_display, or group_skip arguments; row grouping is a table-level fact and is now declared once with the new group_rows() verb. The inert-knob warning for group_display/group_skip on non-group columns is gone with them.

  • group_rows() is the new structural verb: group_rows(by, display, skip) names only the structural grouping keys outer to inner (the section headers and any hidden break keys, not the visible label column, which stays an ordinary cols() column and is auto-indented). display is a single value applied to every key ("section", "collapse", or "repeat"); a hidden break-only key is expressed with col_spec(visible = FALSE) rather than a display mode. skip follows the readr::read_csv(col_names = ) pattern: TRUE (the default) derives the blank spacers from display and key visibility, FALSE inserts none, and a character subset of by breaks on exactly those keys (e.g. skip = "param"). Nesting is just listing the header keys (by = c("param", "visit")). It replaces a prior declaration wholesale, and its keys may not overlap subgroup(by = ).

  • paginate() gained repeat_cols, replacing the usage = "id" role: the horizontal-panel stub defaults to the visible group_rows() keys, and an explicit repeat_cols vector replaces that default.

Minor improvements and bug fixes

  • DESCRIPTION’s SystemRequirements no longer contains the bare word “LaTeX”, which pak’s system-requirements scraper matched and answered by force-installing the texlive OS package (a sudo failure on locked-down hosts such as Domino); the TeX distribution remains optional for PDF output.

  • Fidelity warnings now render their feature string as inline code instead of a quoted value, so a feature that itself contains quotes (decimal_metrics = "afm") no longer prints with escaped quotes.

  • check_latex() now probes package availability through kpsewhich (the resolver xelatex itself uses) instead of the tlmgr package database, fixing all-missing false negatives on apt-installed TeX Live and frozen TinyTeX images, no longer requires the tinytex R package, and reports a new bundled column.

  • emit() to DOCX now stamps the body’s left/right cell margins on section-header, blank-spacer, column-header, and subgroup-banner cells, so their text aligns with body text exactly as in RTF (section headers previously sat one cell margin further left, making nested indents read one character too wide in Word).

  • emit() to Typst now folds 2+ space runs in body cells under preset(whitespace = "collapse"); the no-wrap hardening previously rewrote the run to non-breaking spaces first, so the knob was a silent no-op on Typst while every other backend honoured it.

  • emit() to Typst now stamps the header surface background and padding on the column-label cells, so preset(colors = list(header = ...)), preset(padding = list(header = ...)), and the equivalent style() at cells_headers() render as they do on RTF, HTML, LaTeX, and DOCX.

  • emit() to LaTeX/PDF and Typst now places the running header band so its bottom edge sits exactly on the top-margin line, growing upward into the margin, and keeps the body at exactly the configured top margin — matching the RTF and DOCX placement; the LaTeX head lengths moved onto the geometry option list (a post-load \setlength{\headsep} shifted the body off the margin instead of moving the header) and every band row now carries a \strut so the band’s bottom edge no longer depends on descenders in its content.

  • emit() to HTML and Markdown no longer drops a group_rows() blank spacer when a group transition coincides with a page boundary; the continuous flow keeps every spacer and only the very first row of the table suppresses one.

  • emit() to Markdown now renders the indent of nested section headers as   before the bold markers instead of spaces inside them, which CommonMark refused to parse as bold (literal ** showed in the render).

  • emit() to PDF now writes to a relative file path correctly; the path was previously resolved after switching into the temporary compile directory, so the output landed there and was deleted with it.

  • emit() to RTF now resolves the row cell gap of header-band, column-label, blank-spacer, section-header, banner, and title rows from preset(cell_padding = ) like body rows do (previously hardcoded, so a non-default padding skewed header text relative to body text).

  • figure() output no longer spills onto a blank trailing page in Word: the RTF closing paragraph after the full-page image row now carries the body font size (a bare paragraph rendered at RTF’s 12pt default, taller than the reserved row), and the page-size model now budgets the preset(pagefoot = ) slot rows (and any pagehead rows that overflow the top margin), which intrude into the body exactly like footnote lines. The same budget applies to table pagination.

  • emit() PDF output now works on TeX installations that lack tabularray / ninecolors and cannot run tlmgr install (locked-down Domino / Posit Workbench images): tabular ships verbatim CTAN copies of both single-file packages in inst/tex/ and stages them next to the generated .tex at compile time whenever the local TeX cannot resolve them.

tabular 0.2.0

CRAN release: 2026-07-06

New features

  • The documentation site gained an AI / Agents section linking a tabular skill (for LLM coding agents), the auto-generated llms.txt, and a concatenated llms-full.txt, mirroring the LLM-friendly documentation pattern.

  • col_spec(group_display = "header_row") now collapses a single-member group to one flush-left row (the group value becomes the row label, still carrying any cells_group_headers() styling) instead of emitting a redundant header plus a lone indented child, and no longer emits an empty header for a blank or NA group value. Multi-member groups are unchanged.

  • figure() renders a figure (the “F” in TFL) to every backend (RTF, LaTeX, PDF, HTML, DOCX, and Markdown), wrapping a ggplot, a recorded base-R plot, a zero-argument drawing function, or a PNG / JPG file in the same submission chrome as a table (titles, footnotes, page header and footer). The image is placed in the body content-box by halign and valign (both default to centred), exact on the paged backends and approximate on the continuous ones. A list input emits one figure per page, optionally driven by a meta data frame whose columns become per-page {token} values. On the continuous backends (HTML and Markdown) a multi-page figure’s shared titles and footnotes render once above the stacked plots; supplying meta switches to per-page chrome. is_figure_spec() tests for the new spec, and emit() writes it to a file. A figure’s titles, footnotes, and page header / footer honour style() and the preset() cosmetic knobs (fonts, colours, alignment, padding) and the preset(spacing = ...) inter-section gaps, just like a table; styling its (absent) body, headers, or subgroup is an error. A drawing function that raises an error aborts with a clear message naming the failing page. No new package dependency: plots rasterise through base grDevices and ggplot2 (Suggests) only when a ggplot is passed.

  • pivot_across() gained an aux argument to bind auxiliary comparison columns (difference, hazard ratio, p-value) from a second ARD, aligned 1:1 on the row_group key and appended as trailing columns.

  • pivot_across()’s column argument now accepts the reserved tokens .variable and .stat to make an analysis variable a column band: c(".variable", "<arm>") lays variables side by side with statistics as rows, and c(".variable", ".stat") spreads each statistic into its own column with the arm as a row stub. Per-variable statistic / decimals resolve inside each band.

  • pivot_across()’s decimals may now be a list keyed by row_group values, for per-group precision in one call.

  • preset(font_family = ...) generic chains ("mono" / "sans" / "serif") now lead with the ubiquitous Microsoft Office face (Courier New / Arial / Times New Roman) and keep the metric-compatible Liberation face as the last fallback, so Word shows a font the reader actually has installed on Windows / macOS instead of a phantom “Liberation Mono” in its font menu. The faces are metric-compatible, so layout, line breaks, and decimal alignment are unchanged. A bare font_family = "Courier New" now also leads with Courier New (previously resolved led by Liberation Mono). The package bundles no fonts; an arbitrary named face ("IBM Plex Mono", "Source Code Pro", etc.) is emitted verbatim for the consuming application to resolve.

Breaking changes

  • col_spec() gained a single indent argument (an integer for a fixed level on every body row, or a column name for per-row depth); the previous indent_by argument and the usage = "indent" value were removed in favour of it. An explicit indent on a group_display = "header_row" host now suppresses the section auto-indent, yielding a single rather than double indent.
  • paginate() removed the no-op panels = "auto"; panels is now a positive integer.
  • pivot_across() no longer pre-indents stat_label with two leading spaces; indentation is applied downstream by the renderer via col_spec(usage = "group") / group_display, so a header_row stub no longer double-indents.

Minor improvements and bug fixes

  • Every warning now carries a tabular_warning_<kind> class (input, runtime, layout, fidelity) mirroring the tabular_error_<kind> error taxonomy, so warnings can be caught selectively; the former tabular_warn_layout class was renamed to tabular_warning_layout.
  • col_spec() now warns when group_display or group_skip is set on a non-group column (the knobs are inert unless usage = "group").
  • cols() / cols_apply() now restore a column’s visibility and reset group_display on a later call, and merge every column attribute field-completely (previously a default value could not be merged back and some fields could be dropped).
  • emit() now centres decimal-aligned columns on every backend instead of right-aligning the uniformly NBSP-padded block, so the values sit under the centred column header (cross-backend parity).
  • emit() to DOCX now declares an in-class <w:altName> fallback for each font, so a reader missing the primary face substitutes a metric-compatible face in the same class (mono stays mono) instead of panose-guessing to a serif. This brings DOCX in line with the RTF (\*\falt) and PDF / LaTeX (\IfFontExistsTF cascade) backends, which already declared the same in-class fallback chain.
  • emit() to HTML now applies per-cell body alignment through a specificity-bumped .tabular-table td.text-* rule, so decimal, centred and right-aligned columns actually render aligned; previously the base .tabular-table td { text-align: left } rule outranked the plain alignment class and every body cell silently fell back to left.
  • emit() to HTML now aligns the running page header and footer to the table width via a centred fit-content container, instead of spanning the full document width.
  • emit() to HTML and Markdown no longer repeats a subgroup() banner mid-table when a group is taller than one estimated page. The continuous backends draw one banner per subgroup value; the print-only page-break markers within a group are unchanged, and the paged backends (RTF, LaTeX, DOCX) still repeat the banner on every continuation page by design.
  • emit() to PDF / LaTeX no longer renders the table wider than the printable area: tabularray adds per-column separation outside each column’s wd, so the column widths are now reduced by that separation and the rendered table total matches the resolved width (and the RTF / DOCX cell widths) instead of bleeding into the right margin. (#27)
  • emit() to PDF / LaTeX now renders column headers in bold, matching the DOCX, RTF and HTML backends.
  • emit() to PDF / LaTeX now sets the body font size after \begin{document} (where it survives) and re-asserts it inside the running header / footer, so an 8pt table no longer renders its body or page chrome at the 10pt document-class default. (#27)
  • emit() to PDF / LaTeX now tightens the gap between a running page header and the title (and body to a running footer) to one line via \headsep and \footskip, instead of the wide document-class default.
  • emit() to PDF / LaTeX no longer overflows a figure onto a second page: the image is placed with flexible \vfill glue rather than a fixed-height box that reconstructed to just over the page height, so a multi-page figure (for example one Kaplan-Meier plot per treatment arm) now fits one page per plot.
  • emit() to RTF and DOCX no longer emits a phantom blank page after each figure plot. The figure box reserves a line for the closing paragraph every paged backend appends after the exact-height image, RTF exits table context with \pard\par before the next section break, and DOCX starts each continuation page with a structural <w:pageBreakBefore/> instead of a standalone page-break paragraph that stranded a blank page. A multi-page figure driven by per-page meta also sizes each page’s image box from that page’s interpolated footnotes, so a longer-footnote page no longer overflows.
  • emit() aborts with a clear tabular_error_layout message when a figure’s titles and footnotes alone exceed the printable height, instead of failing with an opaque graphics-device error.
  • emit() to RTF now leads the body font slot with the first face of an explicit font_family stack instead of the Linux-first default chain, and classes a mono stack \fmodern (fixed pitch) the same way DOCX classes it modern. A font_family = c("Courier New", "Liberation Mono", "Courier") request now renders as Courier New mono in Word instead of substituting a serif, because the named primary face leads the font table rather than being demoted to a \*\falt alternate.
  • emit() to RTF now emits a section break only BETWEEN panels (n-1 breaks for n panels) rather than after every panel, so a single-panel table no longer ends with a trailing section break that Word renders as a phantom blank page.
  • emit() to RTF now reserves one line per running-header row in \headery, so a multi-row page header (for example a protocol row plus an analysis-set row) no longer bleeds back into the body and tips the last table rows, or the table’s trailing paragraph, onto a phantom second page.
  • emit() now renders a zero-row empty-state page as a normal table whose body is a single full-span, horizontally centred “no data” message row, where the first data row would sit: the table chrome (titles, column header) leads, the message follows in the body, and the footnote trails immediately, all flowing compactly at the top of the page with blank space below. The message is centred by each backend’s native cell alignment on every backend (RTF, LaTeX, PDF, HTML, DOCX, Markdown); it is no longer vertically centred or relocated into the page margins. A natural-height message row plus trailing footnote cannot overflow, so the recurring phantom-page bug stays fixed. A subgroup(keep_empty = TRUE) empty crossing renders the same way, as one message row in its own panel.
  • emit() now closes a zero-row empty-state table’s data region with the body bottom rule on every backend, so the “no data” page carries the same closing rule a populated table does. The rule follows the rules preset (a custom bottomrule width / style / colour is honoured, and bottomrule = "none" drops it) instead of being absent (RTF / DOCX) or a fixed default.
  • emit() to PDF / LaTeX now wraps a table footnote to the table width rather than overrunning it: the footnote minipage no longer double-counts the column separation that the column widths already fold in, so on a narrow table the footnote text stays within the table-width footnote rule instead of spilling past it (and past the printable width).
  • figure() and paged-table pagination now size the body box from the number of wrapped chrome lines a long title or footnote actually occupies at the printable width, not the element count, so a wrapped footnote no longer pushes content onto a second page on DOCX (and any paged backend). Wrapping is computed by greedy word packing against the font metrics. (#26)
  • paginate() now collapses a zero-row table to a single empty-state page; horizontal panels no longer multiply an empty table into several identical blank pages.
  • pivot_across() now resolves a keyed statistic (e.g. list(hierarchical = "{n} ({p}%)")) against each row’s real ARD context on the hierarchical path, so a list keyed by hierarchical no longer falls through to the bare {n} default and silently drops the percent.
  • pivot_across() now warns when the overall label collides with an existing arm name, instead of silently merging the pooled rows into that arm’s column.
  • preset()’s decimal_metrics knob gained "afm" (now the default), making decimal alignment width-exact in proportional fonts via the bundled font metrics; Markdown output keeps character padding.
  • preset() gained an empty_text knob, a house-style default for the zero-row message that a per-table tabular(empty_text = ...) still overrides.
  • preset(spacing = ...) now drives the blank lines around a subgroup banner (the subgroup region) and around a figure() title and footnote; the Markdown table title and footnote gaps now follow the same knob.
  • preset(width_mode = "window") now sizes auto columns proportionally to their content width to fill the page, instead of giving every column an equal share.
  • subgroup() gained a keep_empty argument; with keep_empty = TRUE a zero-N crossing is retained and rendered as an empty-state page carrying its banner instead of being dropped.
  • subgroup() no longer errors on a zero-row input; the table renders the empty-state placeholder once with no subgroup banner.
  • tabular() gained empty_text, the message shown when a table has zero data rows (default “No data available to report”). Zero-row tables now render the full page chrome and the column headers with the message placed in the body, replacing the previous bare “(no rows)” marker.

tabular 0.1.0

CRAN release: 2026-06-11

First release. tabular renders pre-summarised clinical tables and listings to RTF, LaTeX, HTML, PDF, and DOCX from one immutable verb pipeline, with no external Java or SAS dependency. This initial CRAN version consolidates the entire pre-release development cycle: every feature and bug fix below was designed, implemented, and tested before this first release.

Scope. This release covers tables and listings. Figure (graph) output is not yet supported and is the focus of the next release.

Build pipeline

  • tabular() takes a pre-summarised wide data frame (one input row is one display row) plus multi-line titles and footnotes.
  • cols() / col_spec() set per-column usage, label, format, width, alignment (including decimal alignment via bundled font metrics), visibility, NA text, per-row indent (indent_by), and group display. cols() takes a .default fallback col_spec(), and cols_apply() applies one col_spec() to many columns (by name or predicate), resolving a {.name} token in a label to each matched column.
  • headers() builds multi-level column-header bands with passthrough leaves; sort_rows() sorts on hidden numeric keys; subgroup() partitions with a {col} banner template and optional per-page big_n.
  • style() applies predicate-targeted cell styling through the cells_*() location helpers; preset() / set_preset() / get_preset() set cosmetic defaults (fonts, colours, rules, padding, alignment, page chrome) per table or per session, with reusable house styles via style_template().
  • footnote() attaches auto-numbered footnotes (letters, numbers, or symbols) to any cell, column header, or title, deduped by id and byte-identical across backends.
  • paginate() does group-aware pagination with an auto-computed per-page row budget; emit() writes the chosen backend (creating parent directories with create_dir), and as_grid() resolves the grid without I/O.

Rendering

  • Native emission to RTF, LaTeX, HTML, PDF (via LaTeX), and DOCX from a single resolved grid; output is verified by per-backend byte snapshots and a cross-backend CDISC-pilot qualification (inst/qualification/).
  • Inline markup via md() and html().
  • Glue-style {expr} interpolation in static labels, titles, footnotes, and header band labels, evaluated in the calling environment at build time.
  • Significant-whitespace preservation across all backends (preset(whitespace = "preserve"), the default).
  • check_latex() reports LaTeX-package availability for PDF output and prints the exact tlmgr_install() remedy for anything missing — including a CTAN-mirror pin (tinytex::tlmgr_repo("auto")) when an install stalls behind the redirecting default mirror (commonly on Windows); check_fonts() does the same for fonts, per backend.

Data

  • Bundled synthetic CDISC-pilot demo data (cdisc_saf_demo, cdisc_saf_ae, cdisc_saf_aesocpt, cdisc_saf_vital, cdisc_eff_resp, the BigN frames cdisc_saf_n / cdisc_eff_n, and the long-format ARD companions cdisc_saf_demo_ard / cdisc_saf_aesocpt_ard) for examples and vignettes.