reformat ascii table in R with pander

Question

I have the following problem...

I want to paste this ascii table from R into a reporting software (GE Viewpoint Ultrasound Reporting Software)

pander::pandoc.table(mpg[1:3, 1:3])

The resulting table looks like this...

------------------------------
 manufacturer   model   displ 
-------------- ------- -------
     audi        a4      1.8  

     audi        a4      1.8  

     audi        a4       2   
------------------------------

However when I paste into the reporting software, the format appears like this..

I thought that perhaps a workaround would be to copy the text back from the reporting software and re-format the ascii table so that it would look normal when I pasted into the reporting software...

When I copy from the reporting software and paste into R... I get the following

------------------------------
          manufacturer   model   displ 
-------------- ------- -------
          audi        a4      1.8  

audi        a4      1.8  

audi        a4       2   
------------------------------

If I put in quotes and pass to the console I get the following...

> table
[1] "\n------------------------------\n          manufacturer   model   displ \n-------------- 
------- -------\n          audi        a4      1.8  \n\naudi        a4      1.8  \n\naudi        
a4       2   \n------------------------------\n"

Any ideas on how I could reformat this string of text into a table which will paste correctly into my reporting software??

---UPDATE---

I tried the following code, but I realize now that I am pasting ascii into a variable width font... so this does not work 100%. In fact, it really isn't working at all. Anyone know how to adjust for this? Is there are reference table of pixel width ratios for each character in a variable width font?

library(gt)
library(tidyverse)
library(pander)

raw <- mpg[1:3, 1:3]
text <- pander::pandoc.table.return(raw)


text <- str_replace_all(text, " ", "  ")
text <- str_replace_all(text, "-", "--")
num <- str_extract(text, " \n(.*?)\n")
num <- str_replace(num, " \n", "")
num <- str_replace(num, "\n", "")
num <- str_split(num, "  ")
num <- nchar(max(num[[1]]))


mat <- str_split(text, "\n")


raw <- rbind(
          colnames(raw), 
          raw
)

new_table <- c()

for (j in 1:dim(raw)[1]){
          
          
          out <- ""
          
          for (i in 1:length(raw[j, ])){
                    
                    word_char <- nchar(raw[j, ][i])
                    word_space <- (num - word_char)
                    space_before <- floor(word_space)/2
                    space_after <- ceiling(word_space)/2
                    new_word <- paste(
                              paste(rep(" ", space_before), collapse = ""), 
                              raw[j, i], 
                              paste(rep(" ", space_after), collapse = ""), 
                              sep = ""
                    )
                    
                    out <- paste(out, new_word, sep = "")
                    
                    
                    
                    # print(new_word)
                    # print(word_char)
                    # print(word_space)
                    # print(space_before)
                    # print(space_after)
          }
          
          new_table[j] <- out
          
}
mat[[1]][2]

mat[[1]][2] <- paste(rep("-", ncol(raw)*num), collapse = "")
mat[[1]][length(mat[[1]])-2] <- paste(rep("-", ncol(raw)*num), collapse = "")

num_spaces_to_insert <- nchar(mat[[1]][2]) - nchar(mat[[1]][4])
num_spaces_to_insert <- num_spaces_to_insert/(ncol(raw)-1)*2
mat[[1]][4] <- str_replace_all(mat[[1]][4], "  ", paste(rep(" ", num_spaces_to_insert), collapse = ""))


x <- 3

while (x < length(mat[[1]])-2){
          
          # print(mat[[1]][x])
          # print(x)
         
          for (i in new_table){
                    
                    print(x)
                    print(i)
                    print(mat[[1]][x])


                    mat[[1]][x] <- i
                    
                    print(mat[[1]][x])
                    
                    x <- x + 2

          }
          
          
}


mat[[1]] <- paste(mat[[1]], collapse  = "\n")

gt::html(mat[[1]])

Here is what the table looks like when I post the result into the reporting software