Beautify RMarkdown tables with beautifyR

RMarkdown is a nice tool for creating automated reports. Heck, it is even suited for creating beautiful slides which I haved used in the past for my introductory R course.

However, one thing I always hated when working with Markdown, and even further in LaTeX, is working with tables. More specifically, maintaining a neat layout and not descending into table chaos. Everybody who has worked with Markdown tables at least once, probably has encounterd this issue.

| some column | another column |
|:------------|:---------------|
| an errrror  |                |

Once you typed out everything and kept everything tidy, you see an error in your table. Of course, you want to correct it. Or even worse, adding a line requiring a wider column.

| some column | another column |
|:------------|:---------------|
| an error  |                |
| a very long cell in this column |     |

By now, every column and row had to be adjusted. What might be doable for smaller tables, ends up annoying quickly.

Inspired by the "beautify" function in the Abricotine Markdown editor, I tackled this problems by developing a RStudio addin called beautifyR. Here you can see it in action:

It is published under a free and open source license (GPL-3) over at GitHub. You can install beautifyR using the Addinslist addin or use:

devtools::install_github('mwip/beautifyR')

If you encounter any problems, feel free to open an issue.