[R] [Questionnaire] Standardized Options: Justify/Alignment

[Leonard Mada]

Dear R users,


I have started to work on an improved version of the format.ftable 
function. The code and ideas should be reused to improve other R 
functions (enabling more advanced format of the character output).

However, there are a number of open questions. These are focused on 
standardizing the names and the options of the various arguments used to 
format the output. A separate post will address questions related to 
technical and design decisions.


Note:

The arguments are passed to various helper functions. It may be tedious 
to modify once implemented. Furthermore, package developers should be 
encouraged to use the standardized names and options as well (and may 
use the helper functions as well).


The users are also encouraged to test the various options. Some code to 
enable testing is available at the end of this post.


Structure of "Questionnaire":

a.) Answers should follow a Likert-type scale:
# Strongly disagree (on option ...);
# Disagree (on option ...);
# Agree (on option ...);
# Strongly agree (on option ...);

b.) Motivation: ...

c.) Other comments: ...


### The "Questionnaire"


1.) "MiddleTop", "MiddleBottom" vs "Middle"

Example problem: positioning 3 lines of text on 4 rows;

Workaround: user can easily prepend or append a newline to the relevant 
names, forcing the desired behaviour. However, there is a helper 
function to merge (cbind) 2 string matrices and it may be tedious for a 
user to modify all names. [but this is less used in ftable]

Disadvantages: the 2 variants "break" pmatch()!


2.) Lower case vs Upper case

Motivation: the options for most named algorithms are uppercase and are 
likely to remain uppercase;

Example: option = c("MyName1", "MyName2", "Fields1", "Fields2", ...);

Existing options in format.ftable: are lowercase, "left", "right", 
*"centre"*;


3.) Standardized Names

3.a.) Arguments:
justify = ... or align = ...?
pos = ... or position = ... or valign = ... ?

3.b.) Options:
- "left", "right", "centre" vs "center"?
- using both "centre" and "center" break pmatch();
- "top", "bottom", "middle";

Native-English speakers should review this question as well.

Note:
The new function enables to justify differently both the row-names and 
the factor levels:
- there are actually 2 arguments: justify="left", justify.lvl="c"; # 
with centre vs center issue!


I do not now if there is any facility to run such questionnaires through 
R. My resources are also rather limited - if anyone is willing to 
provide help - I would be very happy.


Sincerely,


Leonard


===========

### Test Code

The latest version of the ftable2 function (contains a fix) and the 
needed helper functions are available on Github:
https://github.com/discoleo/R/blob/master/Stat/Tools.Data.R


### Some Data
mtcars$carbCtg = cut(mtcars$carb, c(1, 2, 4, +Inf), right=FALSE)
# Alternative:
# mtcars$carbCtg = cut(mtcars$carb, c(1, 2, 4, 8), include.lowest=TRUE)
tbl = with(mtcars, table(cyl, hp, carbCtg, gear))
id = c(1,3,4);

# Note: the names can be modified to test various scenarios
xnm = c("Long\nname: ", "", "Extremely\nlong\nname: ")
xnm = paste0(xnm, names(dimnames(tbl))[id])
names(dimnames(tbl))[id] = xnm;
ftbl = ftable(tbl, row.vars = id)

### Test: FTABLE
ftable2(ftbl, sep=" | ", justify="left", justify.lvl="c", pos="Top", 
split="\n")