Option to left align table captions

[arnaudgallou]

Is there a yaml option to left align table captions? By default, the captions of my tables are centered. This might seem trivial but I couldn't find the information in the documentation.

[jjallaire]

Currently you can do this with CSS. For example:

```{=html}
<style type="text/css">
caption, .table-caption {
  text-align: left;
}
</style>
```

Alternatively you can place the CSS inside a styles.css file that you include with e.g. css: styles.css

[martinschaffhauser]

Of course!

reprex.qmd:

---
title: "reprex"
format: 
  html:
    page-layout: full
    toc: true
    toc-depth: 4
    number-sections: true
css: "stylereprex.css"
html-table-processing: none # https://quarto.org/docs/prerelease/1.4/ast.html#finer-control-over-table-processing
editor_options: 
  chunk_output_type: console
---

```{r libs}
#| echo: false
#| message: false
#| warning: false

library(kableExtra)
library(dplyr)
```

```{r data-reprex}
#| echo: false
#| message: false
#| warning: false

set.seed(20240828)

n <- 100
group <- c(rep("A", 53), rep("B", n - 53))
age <- rnorm(n, mean = 60, sd = 20)
outcome <- ifelse(group == "A", rnorm(53, mean = 100, sd = 15), rnorm(n - 53, mean = 120, sd = 15))
df <- data.frame(Group = group, Age = age, Outcome = outcome)
```

```{r table-reprex}
#| label: tbl-reprex
#| tbl-cap: "**Table reprex**. The caption should be left aligned."
#| echo: false
#| warning: false
#| message: false

df %>%
  group_by(Group) %>%
  summarise(`Mean Outcome` = mean(Outcome)) %>%
  mutate(across(where(is.numeric), ~ round(., 2))) %>%
  kable(.,
        row.names = F,
        escape = F) %>% 
        kable_styling(full_width = F, position = "left")
```

See table caption of @tbl-reprex. The caption should be left aligned.

stylereprex.css:

caption, .table-caption {
  text-align: left;
}

/* works for figure caption alignment as intended */
figcaption {
  margin: auto;
  text-align: right;
}

quarto check:

Quarto 1.4.555
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.1.11: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.69.5: OK
      Deno version 1.37.2: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.4.555
      Path: /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: (not installed)
      Chromium: (not installed)

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: Installation From Path
      Path: /usr/local/texlive/bin/linux
      Version: 2024

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

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.10.12
      Path: /usr/bin/python3
      Jupyter: (None)

      Jupyter is not available in this Python installation.
      Install with python3 -m pip install jupyter

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.4.1
      Path: /usr/local/lib/R
      LibPaths:
        - /usr/local/lib/R/site-library
        - /usr/local/lib/R/library
      knitr: 1.47
      rmarkdown: 2.27

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

Thanks for your input!

[martinschaffhauser]

So i just figured out a working css snippet:

figure.quarto-float-tbl figcaption.quarto-float-caption-top {
  text-align: left;
}

I hope this helps anyone!

[mcanouil]

Thanks.

FYI, you are setting twice the code cell labels in your code.
The following is wrong (even in RMarkdown):

```{r table-reprex}
#| label: tbl-reprex

You should not mix R inline code cell syntax and YAML syntax.

```{r table-reprex}

The above is strictly equivalent to

```{r}
#| label: table-reprex

Quarto recommends using only the YAML syntax, i.e., it means you never have something next to the language within the brackets ```{LANGUAGE}.

[martinschaffhauser]

Thank you for the clarification Mickaël - I am transitioning to Quarto from Rmarkdown. The #| syntax is completely new to me. So far it's quite the journey to change some of my existing hacky Rmarkdown reports so they render as intended.

[mcanouil]

#| is the recommended and most used syntax in Quarto, but knitr/rmarkdown supports it natively since few years now.

[mvanaman]

This is a great CSS solution. But given how common a top-left caption is, personally I would reeeeaallly like to see a "topleft" option for the tbl-cap-location: option

[schwa021]

It's strange that, even though it appears as "Table caption" style in word, it does not respect the "Table caption" paragraph style (e.g., left justified)

[eteitelbaum]

The proposed solution here would only work for .html documents, right?

Also, what would be the equivalent code for figures or if you wanted to have left-justified captions for both figures and tables?

[mcanouil]

Actually, I am looking at some journals in my field now and and it seems like most of them align the captions with the margins rather than the edge of the figure.

I don't believe it's easy to align to the edge in LaTeX (or any editing tools) automatically.

PS: do note that there are way better places to ask LaTeX questions than here, _i.e., I found the answer I gave on the Internet (not off the top of my head, even it was there somewhere initially).
This being said, here it is useful to complete the HTML answer with the LaTeX answer.

[eteitelbaum]

Yes I had also found the answer with ChatGPT by the time you had answered it @mcanouil. You are saying there is a rule or norm against asking LaTeX questions on the Quarto CLI discussion board?

[mcanouil]

What I am saying is: as far as I know, there is no "expert" LaTeX user here, so don't expect too much to get answer especially for "advanced" LaTeX questions.

Due to the multiple formats allowed by Quarto/Pandoc which all have their own specificity and syntax, dedicated channel on StackOverflow for example will likely be more helpful.

This repository is really about Quarto itself where there is all the expertise we can provide (note that we really try to answer all questions anyway the best we can).

[eteitelbaum]

I see what you mean. But do you think if I had taken this question to a LaTeX discussion board (e.g. how do I adjust the alignment of captions in Quarto) I would have gotten a good answer?

[mcanouil]

This being said, here it is useful to complete the HTML answer with the LaTeX answer.

Quoting myself

[dmi3kno]

My LaTeX class aligns figure captions left, but does not affect the table caption alignment. I wonder if there's a way to follow the alignment for table captions as well... I am afraid that if you guys make topleft or bottomleft then it would not honor the margins or something like that. Speaking of that, I think caption location should be left as is and there there should another option tbl-cap-align with left, right, center as options. We will deal with margins manually (somehow).

[marioem]

Suggested workaround doesn't work for me with flextable.

This one works however (html output):

<style type="text/css">
  figure.quarto-float-tbl figcaption.quarto-float-caption-top {
    margin-top: .5rem;
    margin-bottom: .25rem;
    text-align:left
  }
</style>