[rkward-devel] quick (hopefully) feature request: show some NA info in data editor

[meik michalke]

hi,

Am Mittwoch, 8. Oktober 2014, 21:29:26 schrieb Thomas Friedrichsmeier:
> On Wednesday 08 October 2014 16:18:17 meik michalke wrote:
> > right now, the data editor doesn't visibly discriminate between NA, <NA>
> > or "" in cells, they're all plain white, which can be a problem especially
> > when dealing with strings. would it be much work to have those "empty"
> > cells show some kind of greyed-out indicator wheter they are just empty
> > strings ("") or really NA?
> 
> true, that's easy enough. Check current SVN.

awesome :-)

> (Now, next you'll want a more obvious method to differentiate between NA and
> "" while _entering_ strings...)

hm. actually, i think it's already quite all right: <del> makes a cell NA, if 
you don't double-click it. but it is indeed a bit unintuitive that for 
*string* columns, it's enough to double-click a cell to change its value from 
NA to "", whereas for all other column types the value doesn't change.

also, just a minor issue: the R console only shows string NAs as "<NA>", all 
others as "NA". don't know if we need that level of equivalence, but it might 
confuse some users to see a "string NA" when it should be a "numeric NA" (or 
whatever) in a cell.

> > and you didn't see the spaces. i have no idea yet how to solve this nicely
> > (meaning: make it visible), but it's an awful trap if you're wondering why
> > the hell your script doesn't find a match for "value".
> 
> Well, that's more difficult, indeed. One option would be showing all strings
> quoted, but I'd say that's not without potential for confusion, either...

a start could be more consistency: when you fill a string cell with more text 
than its width, it is truncated by "..." to indicate there's more. firstly, it 
would be better to color the "..." also in that light grey now, so you don't 
confuse it with actual string values; secondly, these dots are currently 
missing if the value ends with lots of space characters. this makes untrimmed 
values hard to see.

showing light grey quotes might actually not be so confusing. it could be made 
configurable via the format field (or globally).

by the way, is there a way to configure the font yet? for some cases, a 
monospace font would be more useful than the current default.


viele grüße :: m.eik

-- 
  dipl. psych. meik michalke
  institut f"ur experimentelle psychologie
  abt. f"ur diagnostik und differentielle psychologie
  heinrich-heine-universit"at d-40204 d"usseldorf
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