Column widths from gt not respected in html and typst

[aghaynes]

Description

I have some rather long tables with very different amounts of data in the different columns (lots text). As such, i wanted to use different column widths for the table.

````qmd
---
title: "Untitled"
format: html
editor: source
keep-md: true
---


```{r}
data(mtcars)
library(gt)

mtcars |> 
  gt() |> 
  cols_width(disp ~ px(150))

```

````

It seems to be respected within RStudio:

But browsers seem to ignore it (firefox, but edge is the same):

Inspecting the .typ file, the widths do not seem to be passed to typst at all (perhaps due to column width being specified in px in gt?).

Is there anything that I'm doing wrong or can be done here?

[aghaynes]

quarto check
Quarto 1.7.31
[>] Checking environment information...
Quarto cache location: xx\AppData\Local\quarto
[>] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
Pandoc version 3.6.3: OK
Dart Sass version 1.85.1: OK
Deno version 1.46.3: OK
Typst version 0.13.0: OK
[>] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[>] Checking Quarto installation......OK
Version: 1.7.31
Path: xx\AppData\Local\Programs\Quarto\bin
CodePage: 1252

[>] Checking tools....................OK
TinyTeX: (external install)
Chromium: (not installed)

[>] Checking LaTeX....................OK
Using: TinyTex
Path: xx\AppData\Roaming\TinyTeX\bin\windows
Version: 2025

[>] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
Using: Chrome found on system
Path: C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
Source: Windows Registry

[>] Checking basic markdown render....OK

[>] Checking Python 3 installation....(None)

  Unable to locate an installed version of Python 3.
  Install Python 3 from https://www.python.org/downloads/

[>] Checking R installation...........OK
Version: 4.5.0
Path: xx/AppData/Local/Programs/R/R-4.5.0
LibPaths:
- xx/AppData/Local/Programs/R/R-4.5.0/library
knitr: 1.50
rmarkdown: 2.29

[>] Checking Knitr engine render......OK

[cscheid]

Inspecting the .typ file, the widths do not seem to be passed to typst at all (perhaps due to column width being specified in px in gt?).

I don't know why you're mentioning .typ (your example has format: html), but you're correct that the culprit is ultimately the column width specification being in pixels.

Quarto uses Pandoc to parse and process HTML tables, so that libraries like GT can use leverage Quarto features: https://quarto.org/docs/authoring/tables.html#disabling-quarto-table-processing

Pandoc, unfortunately, doesn't understand how to specify column widths in pixels. As a result, we end up with a table lacking the specifier.

In HTML, you can choose to opt out of Quarto's HTML table processing with html-table-processing: none.

In Typst, unfortunately you can't do that, because Quarto's table processing is what converts GT tables to Typst's own format.

[aghaynes]

yes, the example i gave was for html, but considering how easy it is to change, I thought it would be clear enough that i had changed it...

OK... long story short, disable quartos parsing for html, and don't use gt with typst if you want to use custom widths.

I found that the tinytable package does allow to create tables in typst, so there is that workaround at least...

[cderv]

if you want to use custom widths.

I think it works with % unit - pixel is the one creating problems.

[aghaynes]

Thanks @cderv! Percentage widths do indeed work!!