Shiny builder elements introduce empty space

[Saren.T]

Hi,

In Shiny, when I try to build HTML formatted text with multiple elements empty space is introduced. For instance here:
p("Some ", strong("forma", em("tted")), " text")
the word formatted is broken/separated with a space.
Is this intended? and/or avoidable?

Intuitively and due to HTML logic, there should not be any spaces introduced here. I wonder if I am doing something wrong here.

[Saren.T]

I have realized HTML can be used instead. However, functions strong(), em() can be useful to programmatically insert elements. Therefore, I think the behaviour of those functions is not optimal.

[barret]

You are not doing anything wrong here. This was an oversight when htmltools was originally created. We are aware of the issue and are trying to come up with a way to maintain old behavior while behaving as you'd expect it to behave.

This produces the html below, which will be displayed with the extra whitespace.

> p("Some ", strong("forma", em("tted")), " text")
<p>
  Some 
  <strong>
    forma
    <em>tted</em>
  </strong>
   text
</p>

While not the prettiest, you can use the code below:

> p("Some ", strong(HTML(paste0("forma", em("tted")))), " text")
<p>
  Some 
  <strong>forma<em>tted</em></strong>
   text
</p>

HTML is used to preserve the html tags. paste0 is used to collect the character values with no spaces.