Specify KML pop-up window appearance when exporting shapefiles from R to KML

Question

I am trying to export shapefile data from GIS to KML with R and want to specify the appearance of the pop-up window of the KML file when using it in Google Earth. I know of course that it's easily possible within the GIS programs but want to do it with R.

The example below works fine but the pop-up windows don't really look good.

library(raster)
library(plotKML)
library(colorRamps)

col <- getData(country = "COL", level = 1)

kml_open("colombia.kml")
kml_layer(obj = col, 
      folder.name = "testData",
      altitude = 100,
      plot.labpt = F,
      html.table = paste("Info 1: ",as.character(col@data$NAME_1),"  ||  ",
                          "Info 2: ",as.character(col@data$HASC_1),"  ||  ",
                          "Info 3: ",as.character(col@data$NAME_0),"  ||  ",
                          "Info 4: ",as.character(col@data$TYPE_1),"  ||  ",
                          "Info 5: ",as.character(col@data$ENGTYPE_1)))

kml_close("colombia.kml")

I would like specify line breaks e.g. "\n" instead of " || " but that doesn't work with paste. The function cat, where "\n" works fine, doesn't seem to work within the html.table command.

I didn't find any further information or examples regarding the html.table command in the kml_layer function and also tried to solve my problem with the htmlTable-package but didn't have success.

Does anyone have a tip or link with information to solve it?

Answer 1

The simplest way to insert linebreaks in your KML balloon content is to use HTML <br> tags.