Blank table in Rmarkdown inline rendering with dark-themed Rstudio

[kdzhang]

Hi, Thanks for the great package! I encountered the following problem when I tried to use this package.

When use dark mode in R-studio, the table does not show properly:

Use a light theme solves the problem:

Please copy the output of these commands:

library(modelsummary)
library(kableExtra)
sessionInfo()

> sessionInfo()
R version 4.0.5 (2021-03-31)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin17.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS Big Sur 10.16

Matrix products: default
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.0/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] gt_0.2.2           kableExtra_1.3.4   modelsummary_0.7.0

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] highr_0.8         compiler_4.0.5    pillar_1.4.7      tools_4.0.5       digest_0.6.27     checkmate_2.0.0  
 [7] gtable_0.3.0      evaluate_0.14     lifecycle_0.2.0   tibble_3.0.4      viridisLite_0.3.0 pkgconfig_2.0.3  
[13] rlang_0.4.10      rstudioapi_0.13   yaml_2.2.1        xfun_0.19         httr_1.4.2        stringr_1.4.0    
[19] dplyr_1.0.2       xml2_1.3.2        knitr_1.30        generics_0.1.0    vctrs_0.3.5       systemfonts_1.0.1
[25] grid_4.0.5        webshot_0.5.2     tidyselect_1.1.0  svglite_2.0.0     glue_1.4.2        R6_2.5.0         
[31] rmarkdown_2.5     tidyr_1.1.2       purrr_0.3.4       ggplot2_3.3.3     magrittr_2.0.1    backports_1.2.1  
[37] tables_0.9.6      scales_1.1.1      htmltools_0.5.0   ellipsis_0.3.1    rvest_0.3.6       colorspace_2.0-0 
[43] stringi_1.5.3     munsell_0.5.0     broom_0.7.5       crayon_1.3.4     

[kdzhang]

It seems that some other packages also have this problem: https://github.com/glin/reactable/issues/21

[vincentarelbundock]

Hi @kdzhang , thanks a lot for reporting this issue!

Unfortunately, this one is out of my control, as this is a problem in an "upstream" package. The documentation may not be clear enough on this point, but modelsummary doesn't actually draw the tables itself. Instead, the package outsources the table drawing to one of four supported "backends": kableExtra, gt, flextable, and huxtable.

The default table backend is kableExtra, and if you try this Rmd file, you notice the same problem with a very minimalist kableExtra table:

---
title: "R Notebook"
output: html_document
---


```{r}
library(kableExtra)
dat <- data.frame(a = 1:2, b = 2:3)
kbl(dat)
```

I can see 2 main avenues for solutions:

1. Use a different backend. In my attempts, I was able to replicate you problem with the default, but the other backends seem to work fine (although they background is white and a bit ugly with all of them). So you would type: modelsummary(mod, output="gt"), or you would set a global option at the top of your document to change the default backend in all of your subsquent calls: options(modelsummary_default="gt")
2. Open an Issue on the kableExtra repository and hope that the maintainer has time for a solution. If you decide to open an issue, I think a minimal kableExtra-specific example like the one I posted above is probably best, and the link you found to the reactable repo seems useful (though I don't understand the exact problem after having read it).

[kdzhang]

Hi @vincentarelbundock , thank you a lot for the very timely response! I think the gt solutions works well enough for me at this time.

And it seems that using kable instead of kbl will fix the display issue in your minimum example. I will report this to kableExtra team once I have a minute. Thanks a lot!

[andrewheiss]

There's a temporary solution here too, which involves injecting some extra CSS to the table displayed in RStudio https://github.com/haozhu233/kableExtra/issues/689#issuecomment-1170167006

[andrewheiss]

But it's still a kableExtra issue, not a modelsummary issue. It might be possible to permanently add the CSS override in kableExtra itself as long as it doesn't break output in light themes or non-RStudio editors, etc.

[vincentarelbundock]

Thanks for the follow up and the alternative solution! I'll just leave the issue open to make it easier to find in case someone else runs into it.