In an old .Rnw file I was using the RODBC package to read an excel sheet and display a latex table containing checkmarks.
Recently, I tried to change the way I used to read the excel file, and use the XLConnect package instead of RODBC, but I came across a problem. I can't make the checkmark symbol be displayed correctly anymore. Note that the object I pass to xtable for printing is identical with the previous one, but the result is not!
Get here the excel file that I use.
This is the working .Rnw. (I know the code isn't by no means optimal). The file encoding is UTF-8, and I weave the file using knitr and XeLaTeX
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{bbding} % checkmark symbol
\setmainfont[Scale=1.0]{Times New Roman} % Times New Roman
\setsansfont{Times New Roman}
<<eval=TRUE,echo=FALSE,warning=FALSE,message=FALSE,error=FALSE>>=
library(plyr)
library(XLConnect)
library(lubridate)
library(RODBC)
library(stringr)
library(xtable)
library(magrittr)
@
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
{\small
<<eval=TRUE,echo=FALSE,results='asis',warning=FALSE,message=FALSE,error=FALSE>>=
sheet = 'DATA-BOOK.xls'
con = odbcConnectExcel2007(sheet)
tbls = sqlTables(con)
df <- sqlQuery(con,"SELECT * FROM `r-crosstab$`",stringsAsFactors =FALSE)
close(con)
dfr <- df[,2:ncol(df)]
for (i in 1:ncol(dfr)){
dfr[i][is.na(dfr[i])] <- ""
}
temp <- adply(dfr,1,function(x) length(x[x!=""]))
dfr <- apply(dfr,2,function(x) gsub("\\?","\\\\Checkmark",x))
aitia <- paste0("c",1:nrow(dfr))
aitia <- unlist(sapply(aitia,function(x) if (nchar(x) == 2) {x=paste0(str_sub(x, 1, 1),"0",str_sub(x, 2, 2))} else{x} ))
names(aitia)<-NULL
dfr <- cbind(aitia,dfr,temp[ncol(temp)])
dfr1 <- t(dfr)
dfr1 <- apply(dfr1,2,as.character)
rownames(dfr1) <- c(colnames(dfr)[1:(length(colnames(dfr))-1)],"Αθρ.")
colnames(dfr1) <- dfr1[1,]
dfr1 <- dfr1[-1,]
dfr1[nrow(dfr1),] <- paste0("\\textbf{",dfr1[nrow(dfr1),],"}")
print(xtable(dfr1, align=paste0("l|",paste(rep("c|",length(aitia)),collapse="")),
label='tab_crosstab'),
scalebox=0.80,
include.rownames=TRUE,
hline.after=c(-1:nrow(dfr1)),
sanitize.text.function = function(x){x}
)
@
}
\end{center}
\end{document}
That's what I get when I compile it (it is the expected result)
That is the .Rnw where I face the problem. Can you tell me what I need to change?
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{bbding} % checkmark symbol
\setmainfont[Scale=1.0]{Times New Roman} % Times New Roman
\setsansfont{Times New Roman}
<<eval=TRUE,echo=FALSE,warning=FALSE,message=FALSE,error=FALSE>>=
library(plyr)
library(XLConnect)
library(lubridate)
library(RODBC)
library(stringr)
library(xtable)
library(magrittr)
@
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
{\small
<<eval=TRUE,echo=FALSE,results='asis',warning=FALSE,message=FALSE,error=FALSE>>=
wb <- loadWorkbook('DATA-BOOK.xls', create = FALSE)
df <- readWorksheet(wb, sheet="r-crosstab", check.names=FALSE)
df %>%
dplyr::select(- dplyr::contains("ΑITIO")) %>%
names() -> vnames
df[vnames] %<>%
dplyr::mutate_if(is.factor, as.character)
dfr <- df[,2:ncol(df)]
for (i in 1:ncol(dfr)){
dfr[i][is.na(dfr[i])] <- ""
}
temp <- adply(dfr,1,function(x) length(x[x!=""]))
dfr <- apply(dfr,2,function(x) gsub("√","\\\\Checkmark",x)) # √ <U+221A>
aitia <- paste0("c",1:nrow(dfr))
aitia <- unlist(sapply(aitia,function(x) if (nchar(x) == 2) {x=paste0(str_sub(x, 1, 1),"0",str_sub(x, 2, 2))} else{x} ))
names(aitia)<-NULL
dfr <- cbind(aitia,dfr,temp[ncol(temp)])
dfr1 <- t(dfr)
dfr1 <- apply(dfr1,2,as.character)
rownames(dfr1) <- c(colnames(dfr)[1:(length(colnames(dfr))-1)],"Αθρ.")
colnames(dfr1) <- dfr1[1,]
dfr1 <- dfr1[-1,]
dfr1[nrow(dfr1),] <- paste0("\\textbf{",dfr1[nrow(dfr1),],"}")
print(xtable(dfr1, align=paste0("l|",paste(rep("c|",length(aitia)),collapse="")),
label='tab_crosstab'),
scalebox=0.80,
include.rownames=TRUE,
hline.after=c(-1:nrow(dfr1)),
sanitize.text.function = function(x){x}
)
@
}
\end{center}
\end{document}
Here is how the compliled pdf looks like now: 
> sessionInfo()
R version 3.5.1 (2018-07-02)
Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
Running under: Windows >= 8 x64 (build 9200)
Matrix products: default
locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=Greek_Greece.1253
[2] LC_CTYPE=Greek_Greece.1253
[3] LC_MONETARY=Greek_Greece.1253
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=Greek_Greece.1253
attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets
[6] methods base
other attached packages:
[1] magrittr_1.5 extrafont_0.17
[3] xtable_1.8-3 stringr_1.3.1
[5] RODBC_1.3-15 lubridate_1.7.4
[7] XLConnect_0.2-15 XLConnectJars_0.2-15
[9] plyr_1.8.4 tidyr_0.8.2
[11] dplyr_0.7.7
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] Rcpp_0.12.19 Rttf2pt1_1.3.7 rstudioapi_0.8
[4] bindr_0.1.1 tidyselect_0.2.5 R6_2.3.0
[7] rlang_0.3.0.1 tools_3.5.1 extrafontdb_1.0
[10] yaml_2.2.0 assertthat_0.2.0
EDIT
In the following pair of code snipets I tried to minimize the examples, leaving out some irrelevant parts. Again, the first is the one that works ok. In the meantime I noticed that no matter what string I use as a replacement in gsub (in the second example), the result is always the same!!!
Working code:
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{bbding} % checkmark symbol
\setmainfont[Scale=1.0]{Times New Roman} % Times New Roman
\setsansfont{Times New Roman}
<<eval=TRUE,echo=FALSE,warning=FALSE,message=FALSE,error=FALSE>>=
library(XLConnect)
library(RODBC)
library(xtable)
library(dplyr)
library(magrittr)
@
\begin{document}
{\small
<<eval=TRUE,echo=FALSE,results='asis',warning=FALSE,message=FALSE,error=FALSE>>=
sheet = 'DATA-BOOK.xls'
con = odbcConnectExcel2007(sheet)
tbls = sqlTables(con)
df <- sqlQuery(con,"SELECT * FROM `r-crosstab$`",stringsAsFactors =FALSE)
close(con)
df %>%
dplyr::select(- dplyr::contains("ΑITIO")) %>%
names() -> vnames
df[vnames] %<>%
mutate_if(is.factor, as.character) %>%
mutate_if(is.character, funs(coalesce(., "")))
names(df)[1] <- "TITLE"
dfr <- apply(df,2,function(x) gsub("\\?","\\\\Checkmark",x))
rownames(dfr) <- NULL
dfr1 <- t(dfr)
dfr1[1,] <- paste0("c",1:19)
print(xtable(dfr1),
scalebox=0.80,
hline.after=c(-1:nrow(dfr1)),
sanitize.text.function = function(x){x}
)
@
}
\end{document}
NOT working code:
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{bbding} % checkmark symbol
\setmainfont[Scale=1.0]{Times New Roman} % Times New Roman
\setsansfont{Times New Roman}
<<eval=TRUE,echo=FALSE,warning=FALSE,message=FALSE,error=FALSE>>=
library(XLConnect)
library(RODBC)
library(xtable)
library(dplyr)
library(magrittr)
@
\begin{document}
{\small
<<eval=TRUE,echo=FALSE,results='asis',warning=FALSE,message=FALSE,error=FALSE>>=
wb <- loadWorkbook('DATA-BOOK.xls', create = FALSE)
df <- readWorksheet(wb, sheet="r-crosstab", check.names=FALSE)
df %>%
dplyr::select(- dplyr::contains("ΑITIO")) %>%
names() -> vnames
df[vnames] %<>%
mutate_if(is.factor, as.character) %>%
mutate_if(is.character, funs(coalesce(., "")))
names(df)[1] <- "TITLE"
dfr <- apply(df,2,function(x) gsub("√","\\\\Checkmark",x)) # √ <U+221A>
dfr1 <- t(dfr)
dfr1[1,] <- paste0("c",1:19)
print(xtable(dfr1),
scalebox=0.80,
include.rownames=TRUE,
hline.after=c(-1:nrow(dfr1)),
sanitize.text.function = function(x){x}
)
@
}
\end{document}
