rk.flextable

Publication-Ready Tables for RKWard

rk.flextable is an RKWard plugin that provides a graphical interface for the powerful flextable package. It allows users to easily create, format, and export professional tables for scientific publications and reports directly from the RKWard GUI, without writing complex R code.

What's New in Version 0.0.5

📝 Smart Caption and Footer Management

• Overwrite Controls: Added new toggle options (checkboxes) to either overwrite existing table captions/footers or safely append new ones.
• gtsummary Synergy: You can now easily strip away unwanted automatic footnotes generated by gtsummary with a single click by leaving "Overwrite existing footer" checked.
• Footer Stacking & Positioning: By unchecking the overwrite option, you can safely stack multiple lines in the footer. A new Position dropdown allows you to choose exactly where the new text goes: either at the Bottom (below existing notes) or at the Top (above them).
• Native Formatted Text (Unicode): The footer text box natively supports Unicode characters! You can directly copy and paste superscripts (like ¹, ²) to write standard statistical notes (e.g., ¹n(%)) without needing to write complex R formatting code.

Features

• GUI-Driven Creation: Convert any R dataframe into a formatted table with a few clicks.
• One-Click Themes: Apply professional styles instantly (Scientific/Booktabs, Minimal, Zebra, Boxed, etc.).
• Advanced Styling:
  • Header Control: Bold text and center alignment.
  • Zebra Striping: Apply alternating background colors to rows for readability.
  • Conditional Formatting: Highlight specific cells based on values (e.g., color cells where P.Value < 0.05).
• Smart Refinements: Automatic column width adjustment (autofit) and footer generation.
• Export Capabilities: Save your formatted tables directly to:
  • Microsoft Word (.docx)
  • Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx)
  • HTML
• Advanced Table Formatting: Add table captions (titles), custom footers with font size control, and adjust table width proportions or fixed layouts.
• Workspace Management (RDS): Save and load any R object (dataframes, tables, models, plots) natively as .rds files directly from the GUI.

🌍 Internationalization

The interface is fully localized to match your RKWard language settings:

• 🇺🇸 English (Default)
• 🇪🇸 Spanish (es)
• 🇫🇷 French (fr)
• 🇩🇪 German (de)
• 🇧🇷 Portuguese (Brazil) (pt_BR)

Installation

You can install this plugin directly from GitHub using remotes within RKWard:

require(remotes)
install_github("AlfCano/rk.flextable")

Once installed, restart RKWard to ensure the new menu items appear correctly.

Usage

The plugin is located in the main menu under: Data -> Reporting (flextable)

It consists of two main tools:

1. Create Table

Use this tool to generate and style the table object. The interface is divided into three tabs:

Tab 1: Data & Theme

• Dataframe: Select the data you want to format.
• Theme: Choose a preset look (e.g., Scientific for academic papers, Striped for business reports).
• Refinements: Toggle autofit and footers.

Tab 2: Style

• Headers: Apply Bold text or Center alignment to the header row.
• Rows: Enable Zebra Striping and choose a custom background color for alternating rows.

Tab 3: Conditional Formatting

• Enable: Turn on rule-based highlighting.
• Rule Definition: "Highlight cell if [Column] is [<, >, ==] to [Value]".
• Color: Select the background color for the highlighted cells.
  • Example: Highlight column p.value where values are < 0.05 in orange.

2. Export Table

Use this tool to save your table to a file.

• Input: Select the flextable object created in the previous step (default name my_ft).
• Format: Choose Word, PowerPoint, or HTML.
• Output: Select a destination file path.

3. Advanced Formatting

Use this tool to refine an already created flextable with publication-ready details.

• Layout & Theme: Apply extended themes (Colorful, Dark, Neon/Retro), adjust table width proportions (0.1 to 1.0), and switch between Autofit and Fixed layouts.
• Caption & Footer: Add a main table title (caption) and source notes (footer), dynamically adjusting their font sizes via the officer package.

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The plugin also adds a new utility menu under: File -> Workspace & RDS

4. Save Object to RDS

Easily export any R object from your workspace (a styled flextable, a dataframe, or a statistical model) into an .rds file to preserve its exact structure for future sessions.

5. Load Object from RDS

Import any .rds file back into your RKWard environment safely, assigning it a custom variable name without overwriting existing data.

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Requirements

• RKWard: 0.7.5 or higher.
• R Packages:
  • flextable
  • magrittr
  • officer (automatically installed with flextable)

Author

Alfonso Cano Robles

• Email: alfonso.cano@correo.buap.mx

Assisted by Gemini, a large language model from Google.

License

This project is licensed under the GPL (>= 3).