[RkWard-devel] Second 0.4.6 preview release, testing, translations

[Prasenjit Kapat]

Some more on Import plugin: Under the following menu,

File > Import > Import Data

When the file open dialog box is displayed, the file list is empty. Doesn't 
matter whether I choose Format as SPSS or Text. The Filter drop box 
shows, "All Supported Files", "Unknown", "Unknown", ..... !!!!

I remember having mentioned such a bug in respect to "File > Open R script 
file". See the following two archived mails:

https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=12970&max_rows=25&style=flat&viewmonth=200610&viewday=14
https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=12970&max_rows=25&style=flat&viewmonth=200610&viewday=17

> I've added those three and allowEscapes. Hope
> we've covered everything, now (well, as.is is still missing, but it's hard
> to implement in a nice way, and stringsAsFactors should cover most real
> world use cases, I hope).

Actually, that is exactly what I was looking for. Well, now my csv is nicely 
imported. I will try to do some more import testing.

> > [] Should the "CSV" be renamed to something else, since the plugin
> > provides option for "\t" or  ";" or "," or " " as  the separators? Maye
> > be, File->Import Format->Read.Table ?
>
> Well, CSV is not quite correct, technically (though you could simply read
> it as "Character Separated Values";) ). On the other hand, I don't
> think "Read.Table" would be too helpful a description. Changing it to Text
> / CSV for now.

Looks good to me.

> > [] Now I am shooting wild: (Not for 0.4.6 release): Is it possible to
> > provide a "preview" of the import much like what the various office
> > suites (oocalc, kspread etc.) do, to let the user see what is actually
> > happening/going to happen once the import is completed?
>
> Hm, yes. This would be nice, but not exactly easy to do (but probably not
> impossible, either). I'll add it to the TODO list for now.

Great. Will look forward to it whenever implemented.

> > [] This comment might make the plugin too complicated/confusing. What I
> > was thinking is: add a dropbox under the "General" tab, which will decide
> > a predetermined set of defaults for the various parameters. To be
> > precise, the drop box, will include: None, CSV, CSV2, DLIM, DLIM2 which
> > in turn will the set the paramters to the read.csv, read.csv2, read.dlim,
> > read.dlim2 respectively.
> > 	Ok, though this is a thought of mine, but I am very uncomfortable with
> > this being implemented (self contradicotry!). What do others think?
>
> I don't think it's too useful in this particular case, since it basically
> just affects the two parameters "decimal point character" and "field
> separator character" which are directly available on the first tab (yes, it
> also affects some further parameters, but those two are the important
> ones). Probably, having those different defaults is more useful on the
> command line, than for a dialog. But what does everybody else think?

You are perfectly right. Some conviniences are for command line only. Didnot 
realise that.

> In general, I do kind of like this idea (but it gives me a slight headache,
> thinking how this could be implemented). Definitely something to keep in
> mind.

Yes, I too feel that way. But this again calls for conditional statements (if 
then else type..) in xml, which we are implementing using a bunch of logic 
convert and connects! May be another reason for a different scripting 
language...

Regards
PK