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R Workspace Browser filterable and sortable (pref by size)

5 messages · Timothy Bates, David Winsemius, Hans-Jörg Bibiko +1 more

Original
Timothy Bates
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Hi all,
Fantastic that the revamped editor has variable finding (type yourData$ then tab if you have not already)!!

I often find still, however, that in a workflow I repeatedly run "names(myData)? because I can?t remember how a variable is named in a data set.

I think Workspace Browser is underused in this respect: It actually replaces a lot of the visual benefit that a spreadsheet offers for thinking about dataFrame).

Workspace Browser could become even more widely used and helpful if it had:
   1. A filter like the lovely history browser
    2. Sortable by object, type, structure, (and preferably size for spotting space hogs)

Wishlist? :-)
David Winsemius
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On May 26, 2011, at 11:44 AM, Timothy Bates wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
I had not. That _is_ a nice surprise. It might be more user-friendly  
if logic could be installed that detects when the window is at the  
bottom of the screen (as I generally set up my display) because the  
scroll is currently only "drop-down" (which disappears) and it would  
be nice if it would "drop-up". Or perhaps a preference switch that  
could be "up" or "down"?

            

      
      
      
    

        
I generally use (at the console window):

  grep(patt, names(dfrm), value=TRUE)

... since I have 100-200 names per dataframe and I only want to see  
the 5- 15 names that have a particular two or three letter string in  
them.

            

      
      
      
    

        
And look at that.... clickable arrows to expand tables and dataframes!

            

      
      
      
    

        
I had overlooked that search window at the top of the History panel.  
NICE.

I guess that is the grep functionality.

            

      
      
      
    

        
Thanks for educating me and thanks to Simon and Hans-Joerg and anyone  
else whose work contributes to the Mac version and the GUI improvements.

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

        
David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Hans-Jörg Bibiko
    

    

      
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On 26 May 2011, at 18:19, David Winsemius wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
For the records the Mac GUI now makes usage of the rcompgen package AND it's configurable (see ?rcompgen).

            

      
      
      
    

        
If there's enough space under the current edited line it will come up as "drop-down" otherwise, if the RConsole window is at the bottom of the screen, it'll come up as "drop-up". In future I would like to replace the standard Mac completion approach by a self-written "narrow-down-while-typing-list", maybe including the chance to customise its appearance; and maybe to implement a kind of auto-completion. Be patient ;)

            

      
      
      
    

        
Good point. Maybe we're able to improve the Workspace browser for such tasks...

            

      
      
      
    

        
For the records it's bound to key equivalent ??H and it makes usage of Mac's ICU regex engine implemented via Cocoa's NSPredicate, ergo similar to grep :)

Cheers,
--Hans
**********************************************************
Hans-Joerg Bibiko
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Department of Linguistics
Deutscher Platz 6     phone:   +49 (0) 341 3550 341
D-04103 Leipzig       fax:     +49 (0) 341 3550 333
Germany               e-mail:  bibiko[-at-]eva.mpg.de

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      David Winsemius
    

    

      
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On May 26, 2011, at 1:10 PM, Hans-J?rg Bibiko wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
For me running R 2.13.0 beta under OSX 10.5.8 with GUI 1.41 (5800)  
x86_64-apple-darwin9.8.0,  it still only "drops-down", (and  
effectively disappears) even when I make a special effort to bump the  
console border against the bottom of my screen. (There had been a  
small gap when I tried it before). But maybe this difference in  
behavior is because I have not yet seen sufficient reason to take my  
Leopard onto Snow country.

On the other hand I discovered that I can replace much of my grepping  
if I know the starting letters. AND I can then "arrow-scroll" through  
the more constrained choices. Nice.

I guess I would have thought that the default should be to "drop-up"  
since one would be expected to be typing near the bottom of the  
screen. Just a thought. I was reasonably happy with just grepping at  
the command line.  Please take my thanks for everything done to  
improve this platform. You guys are doing a great job of supporting us  
for very little pay, so I very much hope your respective organizations  
are treating you well.

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Simon Urbanek
    

    

      
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David,

        
On May 26, 2011, at 1:53 PM, David Winsemius wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
It's nor our call - it's not us actually creating and any drop-down or up - it's your system (we are only providing the list of completion strings) so the behavior appears to be a bug in the OS that has been fixed in Snow Leopard. So, as Hans said, until we create our own custom completion UI (which he suggested) you get what your system gives you  ;).

Cheers,
Simon