[rkward-devel] Request for feedback on new plugin features, and plot history

[Prasenjit Kapat]

Hi,

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 7:55 AM, Thomas Friedrichsmeier
<thomas.friedrichsmeier at ruhr-uni-bochum.de> wrote:
>
> The second area that I would like to pick your brains about is some new plugin
> features. Perhaps you recall this short thread on how to deal with plugins
> that do data.frame specific transformations: http://www.mail-
> archive.com/rkward-devel at lists.sourceforge.net/msg00779.html . The development
> snapshots have some variants of a solution for that. To try it, frist make
> sure that the under_development.pluginmap is activated under Settings-
>>Configure RKWard->Plugins.
>
> You should see a new top-level menu called "Data". In this, there are two
> variants of a "Sort data" plugin, and you will want to try each
> a) while you are editing a data.frame, and the data.frame is the active window
> and
> b) while any other window is active.
> As you will see, in case b), both plugins will seem identical. In case a), the
> active data.frame is preselected in both plugins, but the first variant still
> allows to select a different data.frame to sort.
>
> Key questions on that:
> - Which variant of the plugin is preferrable?

To me the first variant is more transparent. The plugin remains same
and whether or not a data frame is pre-selected is what changes.

> - Do you think it is intuitively clear, when a data.frame is "active"?
> Suggestions for improving this?

For "post release" (unless Thomas wants this implemented pre-release) features:
I would suggest allowing more variables to be selected for ordering
the data frame. I generally use the following function to sort data
frames:

sortframe <- function (.df., ...) .df. [do.call (order, list (...)), ]
# eg:
# my.data <- with (my.data, sortframe (my.data, var1, var2))

We could call it "rk.sort.data.frame" and add it to public.R.

Regards,
-- 
Prasenjit