column widths in markdown tables embedded in rmarkdown documents

Question

Is it possible to set column widths with markdown tables in Rmarkdown? When the text in column 2 gets long the table goes to an equal split between cols 1 and 2. I reviewed answers to what seems like a similar question but nothing seems to be quite right.

I'd like something closer to Version 1 compared to Version 2.

---
title: "Untitled"
output: 
  bookdown::html_document2:
    toc: true
    toc_float: true
    toc_depth: 1
    code_folding: show
    theme: default
    highlight: tango
---

# Version 1

| Something | Else |
|:--|:--|
| Short | This is longer this is longer this is longer  |
| Short | |

# Version 2

| Something | Else |
|:--|:--|
| Short | This is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer |
| Short | |

Prototrophic

If you're creating your table using kable() from knitr, then column_spec in kableExtra should give you what you want. See here. – Herod

Thanks, @Limey. No, I'm just creating pipe-style tables in markdown. – Prototrophic

Answer 1

One easy way how it should work with many parsers is to use different relative widths in your table definition, such as like this:

| Something | Else |
|---------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Short | This is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer this is longer |
| Short | |

Glottal