[rkward-devel] modified - Import plugin..

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi Prasenjit,

On Friday 02 November 2007, Prasenjit Kapat wrote:
> I have uploaded a modified version of the Import Text/CSV plugin -
> feel free to comment and of course do tests. My goals were:

I did not get a chance to look at your changes before now (we'll I could have, 
but my mind was occupied by the KDE4 port).

> 1. Compact-ify the plugin - there was too much empty space around.
>    - due to this, the input boxes for specifying the
> row-names/column-names have become quite small. let me know if this is
> a serious problem. Do people use these boxes to specify the col (row)
> names?

Probably, those fields will rarely be used, indeed (one might fill in an R 
statement, though, in some cases, and the fields are still large enough for 
that purpose).

> 2. Provide "minimum-click" (quick mode) options for importing - using
> the defaults for read.{csv,csv2,delim,delim2}

Wow, the quick mode really is nice. Disabling the radio options which are not 
applicable is a great solution to the problem we discussed, but it simply 
didn't occur to me, then.

>  - This looks fine, though there is another approach to do this - use
> read.table for all the options and explicitly show the default
> parameters being used. Would that be better?

Well, right now the plugin is not really optimized to produce readable code, 
as it prints all the default options (except for the ones not available in 
the quick modes). So this always produces a call with a whole bunch of 
parameters, which are actually set to the respective defaults. I think in 
general it is preferable to omit parameters that are at their defaults, in 
all but very simple cases. However, that's a bit of work to do.

Anyway, your current solution (using read.csv/csv2/delim/delim2 and hiding the 
sep, header, etc. parameters) is a step in the right direction, in my 
opinion, and preferable to using read.table, I think.

> Let me know you opinions... If this (or with further modifications) is
> acceptable then I plan to do a similar thing for write.table to give
> the import/export plugins a uniform look.

Yep, I like it, nice work. Including the new layout (which I was sceptical of, 
before seeing it). Perhaps add a frame around the options concerning string 
handling on the last tab, to visualize that these deal with a common topic.

Regards
Thomas
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