Re: Single most useful dynamic/interactive capability in Mathematica?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg83059] Re: Single most useful dynamic/interactive capability in Mathematica?
- From: David Reiss <dbreiss at gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 05:12:15 -0500 (EST)
- References: <fgura6$rab$1@smc.vnet.net>
On Nov 8, 6:18 am, AES <sieg... at stanford.edu> wrote:
> Q. What would be _the_ single _most useful_ dynamic or interactive
> capability that might be added to Mathematica?
>
> A. The ability to sort an already completed and displayed table on
> any column, simply by clicking on the top of that column, as one
> can do on the columns of Finder windows in List view in the Mac.
Hi,
I am not sure that this is the single *most* useful feature to
add... but I guess that it is what you need right now (!).
This is not something that should be very difficult to program: it
just involves resorting a column of a list and then redisplaying it in
whatever form you need to display it in. And the sorting function can
be chosen from an arbitrary set of pure functions. The main issue is
what sort of user interface do you want to design. And in Mathematica
6 the sky's the limit.
So, I think my point here is that it is unnecessary to "add features"
of this sort to Mathematica; the set of tools to create them is all
there.
I wish that I had time to make up an example for you right now but the
size of the margins in this posting are too small to hold the
proof... (with apologies to Fermat...).
--David
>
> Refinement: Ability to toggle the associated sort order for that
> column (sorting the entire table, of course) by repeatedly clicking
> at the top of that column.
>
> Alternative: An option ("InteractiveSort->False/True") that could
> be added to the Table (or TableForm) command that would
> implement this capability for a given table with no further
> programming.
>
> [Apologies if this or something equivalent to it exists and I've missed
> it; I did make a quick scan through the lists of new features and the
> Interactive/Manipulate descriptions on the Wolfram web pages.]