Table previews don't appear in Positron

[andrewheiss]

The first Positron-related issue!

In Positron (but not VS Code, weirdly), {tinytable} tables don't appear in the preview window and instead cause an error:

Error:
! Function viewer not found in RStudio
Hide Traceback
    ▆
 1. ├─methods (local) `<stndrdGn>`(`<tinytabl[,5]>`)
 2. └─tinytable (local) `<stndrdGn>`(`<tinytabl[,5]>`)
 3.   └─tinytable:::print.tinytable(...)
 4.     └─rstudioapi::viewer(htmlFile)
 5.       └─rstudioapi::callFun("viewer", url, height = height)

Here's a reprex:

This works

```{r}
library(gt)

mtcars[1:5, 1:5] |>
  gt()
```

This doesn't :(

```{r}
library(tinytable)

mtcars[1:5, 1:5] |>
  tt()
```

 

It seems like print.tinytable() is trying to use rstudioapi::viewer() inside Positron? In VS Code, print.tinytable() doesn't try to use {rstudioapi} and instead shows the table in the Viewer tab, as expected:

[vincentarelbundock]

Interesting. There seem to be two issues.

rstudioapi incorrectly detects RStudio when running in Positron

I believe this is a straightforward bug, and I have reported it upstream here: rstudio/rstudioapi#302

Until this gets fixed, I implemented error catching when trying to opening the RStudio viewer in a different IDE. If this fails, print.tinytable() will keep going and launch a browser.

In VSCode, launching this kind of browser usually embeds the HTML in a dedicated pane inside the IDE. (Assuming you have some kind of local server extension installed.)

In Positron, this seems to launch a separate browser window (on my machine).

Equivalent of rstudioapi::viewer() is not implemented for Positron.

This is a known issue, and I hope the Positron team will offer this feature, because it feels quite important to me. Here's the ticket:

posit-dev/positron#2559

What does gt do?

I have no idea. Would be very interested in learning about their solution!

[kylebutts]

@vincentarelbundock Both VSCode and Positron expose options("viewer")$viewer which accepts a url for html. In fact, gt uses htmltools::html_print which uses viewer = getOption("viewer", utils::browseURL)

Edit: RStudio has this too: https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/blob/d2713874570f06dccc92a46d15e5939922817c7b/src/cpp/r/R/Options.R#L29

[vincentarelbundock]

Thanks for the suggestion @kylebutts . I'll look into that when I find some time.

Note: Posit recommends rstudioapi::hasFun("viewer")

rstudio/rstudioapi#302 (comment)

[vincentarelbundock]

@andrewheiss , FYI, @kylebutts is a superstar and just fixed this for us. His PR is merged and tiny tables appear as expected in the Viewer Pane in my local Positron.

Yay!