`gtsave()` to DOCX encoding issue involving `sub_small_vals`

[chihyunkim]

Prework

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Description

The less-than sign generated by sub_small_vals is not encoded properly in the table exported to Word format via gtsave. (But the string < is properly represented if directly in the data.)

Reproducible example

library(tibble)
library(gt)

data <- tibble(x = c(0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1), 
               y = c("<", "%", ">", "î"))

table <- data %>% 
  gt() %>% 
  sub_small_vals()

gtsave(table, "testfile.docx")

Output:

Expected result

Expected:

Session info

> sessionInfo()
R version 4.5.0 (2025-04-11)
Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20
Running under: macOS Sonoma 14.7.3

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/vecLib.framework/Versions/A/libBLAS.dylib 
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.5-arm64/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib;  LAPACK version 3.12.1

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

time zone: America/New_York
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] gt_1.0.0     tibble_3.2.1

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] digest_0.6.37     R6_2.6.1          fastmap_1.2.0     xfun_0.52         tidyselect_1.2.1  magrittr_2.0.3    glue_1.8.0       
 [8] knitr_1.50        pkgconfig_2.0.3   htmltools_0.5.8.1 rmarkdown_2.29    dplyr_1.1.4       generics_0.1.3    lifecycle_1.0.4  
[15] xml2_1.3.8        cli_3.6.4         sass_0.4.10       vctrs_0.6.5       withr_3.0.2       compiler_4.5.0    rstudioapi_0.17.1
[22] tools_4.5.0       evaluate_1.0.3    pillar_1.10.2     fs_1.6.6          rlang_1.1.6   

[olivroy]

Hi ! Thanks for the report. This is indeed an issue with gt. It will be fixed as part of the next release.