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Using markdown icons within tables in Github?

I would like checkmarks to appear in table cells in my github README.md file. The problem is, instead of :white_check_mark: taking the form of a white checkmark, it instead leaves that raw literal text within the table.

Here is the full markdown of the table

| Property | Type | Null | Description |
| -------- | ---- | ---- | ----------- |
| subject | string |   | Message subject |
| body_excerpt | string |   | Short excerpt of the message body |
| to | list | :white_check_mark: | Names and emails of the message recipients |
| cc | list | :white_check_mark: | Names and emails of the message recipients who were CC'd |

Any ideas why this icon might not be appearing?

Thanks

EDIT: above example actually does show the white check marks. For better reference, check out README.md in this repo

Solution

  • TL;DR

    Your table is correctly formatted. The problem is elsewhere.

    More detailed answer

    Hmmm. I've sent a Pull Request to your repo which "fixes" the rendering of the checkmark. However, the fix is completely unrelated. I just dropped some json from the README.

    The removed portion of json seems innocuous though. I'd guess this might not be related to your README content, but rather to the rendering engine GitHub relies on.

    I'd strongly suggest you to report this weird behavior to support@github.com (maybe linking to the PR which demonstrates the potential rendering issue).