Add ability to transpose input data

[jarib]

It would be great if Chartbuilder could transpose the input data at the click of a button, so users don't have to go to a separate tool to turn this

name  2001  2002  2003  2004
foo 1 2 3 4
bar 5 6 7 8

into this:

name  foo bar
2001  1 5
2002  2 6
2003  3 7
2004  4 8

[yanofsky]

This is a dupe of #80

What's the circumstance that the data wouldn't already be inside of a separate tool that could transpose it?

[jarib]

I see your point in #80 about chartbuilder not being a data transformation tool.

However the transpose operation is often done only for display purposes. It's not a change of the actual data, just changing the shape of it so that it will display the way the user wants, and they shouldn't have to go back to Excel etc. to deal with a display concern.

Both of these are valid visualizations of the same data:

The only reason to transpose is because you want a different kind of chart, and thus I think this belongs in Chartbuilder.

[jarib]

You could of course think of and expose this as a "transpose the chart" button instead, and not actually transform the input data. That way you give users the option to create both of these charts from the same data, without turning chartbuilder into a "data transformation tool".

[yanofsky]

I guess that makes sense, but such a feature should be linked to the chart type i think