Multiple spaces are trimmed: Leading / trailing spaces are removed, mid-text spaces are converted into a single space

[yonbar]

Multiple spaces are all trimmed: Leading / trailing spaces are removed, mid-text spaces are converted into a single space.
This includes markdown tricks, e.g.   or "\ua0" , with use_markdown either FALSE or TRUE.

---

library(gridtext)
library(grid)
library(reprex)

# January is led by regular spaces, March is led by non-breaking spaces by using ALT+0160
text <- c("   January", "Feb&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ruary", "    March", "\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0April", "____May", "Ju     ne", 
          "July                    ")

x <- (1:7)/9 + 1/30
y <- rep(0.8, 7)
g <- richtext_grob(
  text, x, y, halign = 0, hjust = 1,
  rot = 45,
  padding = unit(c(3, 6, 1, 3), "pt"),
  r = unit(4, "pt"),
  align_widths = TRUE,
  box_gp = gpar(col = "black", fill = "cornsilk", use_markdown = FALSE)
)
grid.newpage()
grid.draw(g)

^{Created on 2024-02-01 with reprex v2.0.2}

[petermott]

I was intending to use the package to capture and present details of fit objects via cpature.output(summary(fit)). But these rely on spaces to format, and spaces as you not disappear.

[bwiernik]

Whitespace trimming is the expected behavior. You might try out the new marquee package to see if it meets your needs https://www.tidyverse.org/blog/2024/05/marquee-0-1-0/

[petermott]

Whitespace trimming is the expected behavior. You might try out the new marquee package to see if it meets your needs https://www.tidyverse.org/blog/2024/05/marquee-0-1-0/

Alas it would not work on my setup - not at all. I opened an issue though since nothing happened Imcan't see that it will be much use. It was, in fact, Pedersen's patchwork package that set me looking for a way to write text into a grob to display next to a ggplot!

EDIT: The problem was I was using the Default R graphics engine. I switched to Cairo (in RStudio) and is worked. marquee does not force removal of whitespace and permits subscripts. So it will replace gridtext for me.