Is it possible to remove '\emsp' from clock report but preserve indentation?

Question

Is it possible to replace '\emsp' with just plain spaces?

I.e, In Clock reports, there are a lot of these '\emsp's. (See example below.)

I'm able to get rid of them by setting ':indent nil'. But this removes all indent altogether, which is undersirable. I can also get rid of them if I export things. But in the Agenda view I don't export reports and the \emsp's are just a visual distraction.

So far I was able to remove 'TODO' keywords via formatter as described here. But the formatter doesn't seem to see the '\emsp' and can't remove them. It kinda seems like they are added after.

|-----------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+---------+------|
| dev.org   | *File time*                                                       | *9:54*  |      |
|           | Dev                                                               | 9:54    |      |
|           | \emsp Configure VMs for testing [[elisp:(my/goto-parent)][parent]]                            |         | 5:03 |
|           | \emsp test if DND works in outline view in Mars (4.5) Build id: I20150217-0800 has outline view fixed (RHBZ#1012336). |         | 0:16 |
|           | \emsp GtkMenuItem directly instead of GtkImageMenuItem            |         | 1:28 |
|           | \emsp Bug 459487 - [GTK] Replace deprecated gtk_arrow_* with gtk_image |         | 1:31 |
|           | \emsp General                                                     |         | 1:36 |

Answer 1

This is a bug, IMO. Someone complained that the old indentation markers upset table layout in latex output so someone replaced them with these latex instruction. Now of course it is a mess on screen.

I thought the new prettify-symbols-mode might be a handy way to switch out the \emsp for something else, but that can only replace with a single character and it upsets the layout of the table due to the changing width.

So there's nothing for it but to redefine the indentation code:

(defun my-org-clocktable-indent-string (level)
  (if (= level 1)
      ""
    (let ((str "^"))
      (while (> level 2)
        (setq level (1- level)
              str (concat str "--")))
      (concat str "-> "))))

(advice-add 'org-clocktable-indent-string :override #'my-org-clocktable-indent-string)

Change the indent markers to taste.

Answer 2

The manual on Special Symbols says

If you would like to see entities displayed as UTF-8 characters, use the following command:

C-c C-x \

Toggle display of entities as UTF-8 characters. This does not change the buffer content which remains plain ASCII, but it overlays the UTF-8 character for display purposes only.

You can turn this on by default by setting the variable org-pretty-entities, or on a per-file base with the option #+STARTUP: entitiespretty.