Compiling pdf in Rmarkdown with kableExtra full_width = T gives ! Dimension too large error with TeX Live 2021

[martinschaffhauser]

Setting full_width = T in the kable function is giving the following error message when knitting the document with pdfTeX Version 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.22 (TeX Live 2021) installed:

! Dimension too large.
\LT@max@sel #1#2->{\ifdim #2=\wd \tw@ 
                                      #1\else \number \c@LT@chunks \fi }{\th...
l.218 \end{longtabu}

Having pdfTeX 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.21 (TeX Live 2020) installed, the issue does not exist.

[u-fischer]

the tabu package is broken and unmaintained. It is recommended not to use it. See the readme here https://github.com/tabu-issues-for-future-maintainer/tabu

[wphampton]

As it impacts kableExtra, does this suggest that full_width should not be used, or will not be provided in the future? I guess I'm unclear on what guidance is being given to the OP?

[krlmlr]

Upstream issue: https://github.com/tabu-issues-for-future-maintainer/tabu/issues/27.

@u-fischer: What's a good alternative to tabu, one that supports full-width tables spanning multiple pages?

[ulyngs]

Just ran into this issue when I tried to recompile my PhD thesis from a couple of years ago and the longtable functionality was broken.

Seems the tabularray package is the new and maintained alternative?

[eeholmes]

Any news of a workaround?

[tjbrailey]

Bumping this, when longtable = TRUE and full_width = TRUE, I keep getting the error

! Dimension too large. \LT@max@sel #1#2->{\ifdim #2=\wd \tw@ #1\else \number \c@LT@chunks \fi }{\th... l.376 \end{longtabu}

[vincentarelbundock]

Thanks for the report. We know that tabu is broken beyond repair (and unmaintained). I will soon propose a solution (hopefully it gets accepted; not sure yet).

In any case, since there is no actionable information here, and no reproducible example, I will close this to clean up the issue tracker.