Auto-adjust rows height in the Variable Explorer

[v-iashin]

Description

What steps will reproduce the problem?

Please, look at the screenshot that I attached below.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
Everything is okay.

Please provide any additional information below

1. It would be nice to have an option to reduce the row height to the minimum by default. Please, take a look at the screenshot that I attached
   
2. In addition, how about an option that removes the coloring of different data types in the Variable Explorer? The coloring just duplicates the information that is already contained in the "Type" column.

Version and main components

• Spyder Version: 3.0.0
• Python Version: 3.5.2
• Qt Versions: 4.8.7, PyQt4 (API v2) 4.11.4 on Linux

Dependencies

pyflakes >=0.6.0 :  1.3.0 (OK)
pep8 >=0.6       :  1.7.0 (OK)
pygments >=2.0   :  2.1.3 (OK)
qtconsole >=4.2.0:  4.2.1 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0  :  4.2.0 (OK)
pandas >=0.13.1  :  0.17.1 (OK)
numpy >=1.7      :  1.11.0 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6   :  1.4.6 (OK)
rope >=0.9.4     :  0.9.4-1 (OK)
jedi >=0.8.1     :  0.9.0 (OK)
psutil >=0.3     :  4.3.1 (OK)
matplotlib >=1.0 :  1.5.1 (OK)
sympy >=0.7.3    :  None (NOK)
pylint >=0.25    :  1.6.4 (OK)

[ccordoba12]

@goanpeca?

[goanpeca]

Hi @vdyashin thanks for the comments, we understand how this can be useful, we will try to work on this for the 3.1 release

[ccordoba12]

The height is necessary to better display numpy arrays. I don't agree with removing colors, I think they are just fine.

So IMHO there's nothing to do here :-)

[goanpeca]

I don't agree with removing colors

The color things need to be decoupled cause it messes up with the idea of having an unified theme, so that part at least needs tweaking

[v-iashin]

@ccordoba12 thanks for the reply.

I am not saying that the colors and large height of rows are not necessary. I just want an option in Preferences that removes the coloring (or lets users tweak the color scheme!) and minimizes the row heights (but keeps them adjustable by mouse).

I am not sure that drawing this link is appropriate, but, please, look at the RStudio example. Users of RStudio do not have a trouble to distinguish data types without any coloring. I should admit that I missed row height adjustment in RStudio.

[goanpeca]

@vdyashin will work on making that more user friendly :-)

[v-iashin]

By the way, is it really better display arrays by default?

[ccordoba12]

I think it is, but we could change the Value column to show something else, although I'm not sure what ;-)

[goanpeca]

just the first row with n items would do, where n could be 10 or so

[v-iashin]

@ccordoba12 how about memory usage?

[Nodd]

Displaying short arrays is very useful. memory usage is given by the type and size already, the actual value is rarely useful.

[goanpeca]

We are not displaying Byte size though...

[v-iashin]

@ccordoba12 by the way the row height can be resized only for arrays and where it is needed. It will provide a user an opportunity to list more items on one page.

[ccordoba12]

@vdyashin, that looks really nice!! I was thinking exactly along those lines ;-)

Would you mind to create a pull request with your changes? We could merge it for 3.1 :-)

[v-iashin]

@ccordoba12 I am kinda new here on GitHub and don't really know how this all works. It seems to me now that it is expected that I should write a code that implements the idea.

I decided to start to work with Python a month ago and I am afraid I am not capable of coding such things yet.

[ccordoba12]

Ok, no problem :-) But how did you take those screenshots then?

[v-iashin]

@ccordoba12 there were not magic involved. I just created a couple of variables in Variable explorer, and adjusted the heights by mouse according to my taste - that is all.

[ccordoba12]

I see ;-) Ok, we need to make that happen automatically!

[ccordoba12]

@vdyashin, please open a new issue about coloring.

[v-iashin]

@ccordoba12 I am not quite sure what you mean. Should I just look at #3675 or do something else?

[ccordoba12]

I meant that in #3675 I'm only going to fix the auto-adjustment of rows height. So if you don't want us to forget on adding an option to turn off coloring, please open a new issue :-)