RStudio: Switch markdown editing mode between Source and Visual changes special characters

Question

I experienced that for RStudio 2022.02.1 Build 461, switching markdown editing mode between Source and Visual changes special character   to .. It can be observed by switching markdown editing mode from Source to Visual and then back to Source. Wondering how to prevent this rstudio behavior?

Code

---
title: "Test Slides"
format:
  revealjs: 
    chalkboard: 
      buttons: false
    preview-links: auto
    css: styles.css
---

## Intro

-   This is a test 1.

 

-   This is a test 2.

sessionInfo()

R version 4.1.3 (2022-03-10)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 22000)

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252 
[2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252   
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                          
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252    

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

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_4.1.3 tools_4.1.3    knitr_1.38    
[4] xfun_0.30      pacman_0.5.1  

Answer 1

The visual editor will by default rewrite markdown for you in the canonical way expected by Pandoc Markdow. $nbsp; is a non breaking space in HTML. It get transformed in the source are the non breaking space character in markdown. See https://rstudio.github.io/visual-markdown-editing/content.html#non-breaking-spaces

If you don't want that the source are rewritten, you can deactivate canonical mode per file or for project / global option. See https://rstudio.github.io/visual-markdown-editing/markdown.html#canonical-mode and https://rstudio.github.io/visual-markdown-editing/options.html#global-options