Shiny renderText not reacting to change in reactiveValues

[woodward]

I have a small and frustrating problem in my large app. This reactive text does not render when user$stationtype or user$stationvar change (both are elements of user <- reactiveValues()) but does render when stationname() changes (stationname <- reactiveVal()). The ui side is textOutput("timeheader").

  output$timeheader <- renderText({
    # FIXME why doesn't this stupid text show!!! ####
    cat("Time series header:", user$stationtype, stationname(), user$stationvar, "\n")
    if (isTRUE(stationname() > "")){
      "Time series plot:"
    } else if (isTRUE(user$stationvar != "NONE")){
      "Click station marker to view data:"
    } else {
      ""
    }
  })

I tried to make a reprex but for some reason it works fine here. Can't figure out what the problem is! Help!

library(shiny)
library(leaflet)
library(sf)
library(shinyjs)
library(htmlTable) # for htmlTable
library(plotly)
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr) # for drop_na
library(stringr)
library(tibble) # for column_to_rownames
library(htmltools) # for htmlDependency
library(htmlwidgets) # for onRender
library(knitr)
library(purrr) # for negate
library(lubridate)
library(rhandsontable)
library(rlang) # for big-bang !!!

ui <- tagList(
  actionButton("addone", "Add One"),
  textInput("textin", "Enter X"),
  textOutput("total")
)

server <- function(input, output, session){
  user <- reactiveValues(
    n = 0
  )
  observeEvent(input$addone, {
    cat("increment user$n\n")
    user$n <- user$n + 1
  })
  observe({
    cat("input$textin :", input$textin, "\n")
    isolate({
      if (input$textin == "X"){
        user$n <- isolate(user$n) + 1
        cat("user$n <-", user$n, "\n")
      }
    })
  })
  output$total <- renderText({
    cat("display user$n\n")
    user$n
  })
}

shinyApp(ui, server)