Support for merged cells in markdown?

[sodiumchl]

How can I render merged cells correctly? I use quarto render test.md --html but the merged cells are not merged.

An example below from
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46621765/can-i-merge-table-rows-in-markdown

|             |          Grouping           ||
First Header  | Second Header | Third Header |
 ------------ | :-----------: | -----------: |
Content       |          *Long Cell*        ||
Content       |   **Cell**    |         Cell |

New section   |     More      |         Data |
And more      | With an escaped '\|'         ||  
[Prototype table]

[rgaiacs]

Hi @sodiumchl and thanks for your interest in Quarto.

Quarto uses Pandoc to convert the .md file to .html. Pandoc supports many table formats, see https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#tables, but

Pandoc does not support grid tables with row spans or column spans.

[sodiumchl]

Pandoc does not support grid tables with row spans or column spans.

That's an unfortunate limitation. Is there any way to use a different md to html converter instead of pandoc, e.g., multimarkdown?

[rgaiacs]

If you use Quarto, you are lock with Pandoc. Pandoc can be extended with filters, see https://pandoc.org/filters.html but I'm not sure if you will be able to get merged cells using filters.

If you are only targeting HTML output, you should have a look at https://renkun-ken.github.io/formattable/.

[vtraag]

Perhaps this could use an update. From what I see now, grid tables, such as described in https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#tables are fully supported. For example, this example

+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
| Fruit         | Price         | Advantages         |
+===============+===============+====================+
| Bananas       | $1.34         | - built-in wrapper |
|               |               | - bright color     |
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
| Oranges       | $2.10         | - cures scurvy     |
|               |               | - tasty            |
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+

renders perfectly using Quarto to

[rgaiacs]

Dear @vtraag, Thanks for your message. Your example has cells with a list. The question is a cell spanning multiple columns or rows (also called merged cells). The correct example from Pandoc documentation is

+---------------------+----------+
| Property            | Earth    |
+=============+=======+==========+
|             | min   | -89.2 °C |
| Temperature +-------+----------+
| 1961-1990   | mean  | 14 °C    |
|             +-------+----------+
|             | max   | 56.7 °C  |
+-------------+-------+----------+

[stanstrup]

the solution by @rgaiacs is broken by RStudio's visual mode.

[cderv]

broken by RStudio's visual mode.

Possibly an issue to report in RStudio IDE on how grid tables are supported in markdown input.

Edit: or directly at https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto which is the repo for the visual editor code source

[stanstrup]

If you copy in that code in source mode it works. But as soon as you switch to visual mode it "repairs" the table to have no spanned rows or columns.

[mcanouil]

that code

What code?

[stanstrup]

the code by @rgaiacs as I wrote:

+---------------------+----------+
| Property            | Earth    |
+=============+=======+==========+
|             | min   | -89.2 °C |
| Temperature +-------+----------+
| 1961-1990   | mean  | 14 °C    |
|             +-------+----------+
|             | max   | 56.7 °C  |
+-------------+-------+----------+

Put that in the editor in source mode. Switch to visual mode and back to source mode and it as "repaired" the spannning.

[mcanouil]

I don't think Visual Editor supports Grid table.
I suggest you look if this feature request was already reported and if not, open a new one with a fully reproducible example, the steps to reproduce the current behaviour and explain what you want/expect on the appropriate repository which is https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto.

[pmoreno-DTP]

Any update on this issue? I get the same problem and would love to have a fix.

[cderv]

I get the same problem and would love to have a fix.

What is your problem exactly ? What is the table you are trying to write ?
Does same problem relates to visual editor support ? or Quarto rendering ?

Thanks for the additional information