An example of the editor
Trumboywg.js is a lightweight, what-you-see-is-what-you-get, text editor written in jQuery.
I really wanted to use this library in my shiny apps (some work related, some personal), but I couldn’t locate any prior efforts in an R port. Therefore, I used this opportunity to learn to do it myself using the {htmlwidgets} package.
I was able to successfully port over the base version of Trumbowyg and it can be called quite easily using the familiar shiny widget:
trumbowygInput(id = "id", label = "text", value = "Hello world!")
At the same time, many plugins are available for Trumbowyg, such as emoji’s, text coloring, highlighting, and more. I was able to also learn enough to use them natively and to have them be a part of the package.
This was a great learning experience to see how javascript integrates with R and Shiny under the hood. It’s helped me develop a deeper appreciation for the work that goes into creating shiny extensions that I think we all (certainly I!) sometimes take for granted!
A quick shoutout to John Coene and Maya Gans for their various works in describing how to bridge the gap between javascript and R!
You may view a demo of this here
