Data Selector improvements

[rdstern]

This is one of a series of issues that are part of making R-Instat easier to use for the procurement data. The key data set has 185 thousand rows and 100 columns. So it is pretty long and quite wide. Whatever we are able to do to help will also apply to many other of R-Instat's future examples.

• [x] 1. Make the data selector part a bit wider. This will mean that the Add and Data Options buttons become smaller, so the control stays the same size.
• [x] 2. Add the feature that when you hover over a variable you can read the full name.
• [x] 3. Where some variable names are wide make it easier (or automatically) to have the bottom scroll bar.
• [x] 4. Change the "system" for which columns to include. Currently the columns that are date-diff (i.e. difference in dates) are not included.
• [x] 5. Include Date columns as numeric - when they are not specially there as Date.. Currently they seem to be treated as a factor, e.g. in Describe > One Variable > Graph.
• [ ] 6. Right-click has an option perhaps called Details. This opens a sub-dialogue. It has a control that is a grid containing the first 3 columns of the column metadata, i.e the name, label and class. It might also contain the receiver, so the receiver may be completed within the sub-dialogue, before pressing Return. This has options including being able to display just the elements of a given class (e.g. factors), or to sort in various ways, including alphabetical by name, or label and possibly within class.
• [ ] 7. Ideally we would also be able to choose variables by giving a phrase, (using regex), e.g. "pr_". This may be overall or just within the sub-dialogue. I have put a milestone. of end October. I assume this can be beaten for some of these improvements, but the sub-dialogue may be later than this. Depends on what others think in terms of priorities.

[dannyparsons]

I've tried two different sizes for making the selector wider:

and

Any thoughts on both? Or other suggestions? The "Data Options" text is slightly smaller in the second to make it fit. We could replace the text with a symbol though if we wanted to make the buttons smaller.

Should the data frame selector now match the width of the selector too?

[rdstern]

I prefer the first of these two. And yes, the data frame part should be widened to match.

[dannyparsons]

Because the buttons are too squashed in the second one? I think I agree.

[rdstern]

And the second one makes the selector look a bit out of proportion on the dialogue.

For comparison here is an example in SPSS:

[maxwellfundi]

I think the first one looks good. I also would like to have the data frame selector to be widened. I wonder if we need to get our receivers to be bigger, to match the size of the new selector. It looks quite weird to have a huge selector and a small receiver.

[dannyparsons]

Great, I'll go with the first one then. Having the receivers wider makes sense too, but then we'll need to make a change on all dialogs, which I don't think anyone wants to do at the moment.

[dannyparsons]

So now looks like this: