Confusing and inconsistent array-of-dicts display

[aplavin]

These three arrays of dicts are displayed in totally different ways:

Structurally they are the same, and REPL shows them in very similar ways.

I would expect all of them to display as the first one, with the Pluto explorer. The second seems outright wrong, and the third just confusing and inconvenient.

More generally, I often find the table viewer too "eager" to engage. Maybe, there should be an override toggle (display as table or with interactive explorer) in each cell output? It would be useful both ways: sometimes tables don't get recognized.

Notebook file

### A Pluto.jl notebook ###
# v0.19.18

using Markdown
using InteractiveUtils

# ╔═╡ cd19d0b9-d038-40a3-8b5f-e5ac50af3045
using StructArrays

# ╔═╡ 7abef450-8091-11ed-0d95-5b0ca33aadc4
[Dict(1 => 2), Dict(3 => 4)]

# ╔═╡ f73f0bae-3fd6-48d0-8e8a-5f41d0c538a0
[Dict(1 => 2), Dict(3 => 4)] |> StructArray

# ╔═╡ a95d68d0-b6e0-4845-a5cc-b6afa5c33176
[Dict("a" => 2), Dict("b" => 4)]

# ╔═╡ 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001
PLUTO_PROJECT_TOML_CONTENTS = """
[deps]
StructArrays = "09ab397b-f2b6-538f-b94a-2f83cf4a842a"

[compat]
StructArrays = "~0.6.14"
"""

# ╔═╡ 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000002
PLUTO_MANIFEST_TOML_CONTENTS = """
# This file is machine-generated - editing it directly is not advised

julia_version = "1.8.3"
manifest_format = "2.0"
project_hash = "8e30e14200747e20846286370d32183fac038aac"

[[deps.Adapt]]
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git-tree-sha1 = "195c5505521008abea5aee4f96930717958eac6f"
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version = "3.4.0"

[[deps.Artifacts]]
uuid = "56f22d72-fd6d-98f1-02f0-08ddc0907c33"

[[deps.Base64]]
uuid = "2a0f44e3-6c83-55bd-87e4-b1978d98bd5f"

[[deps.CompilerSupportLibraries_jll]]
deps = ["Artifacts", "Libdl"]
uuid = "e66e0078-7015-5450-92f7-15fbd957f2ae"
version = "0.5.2+0"

[[deps.DataAPI]]
git-tree-sha1 = "e8119c1a33d267e16108be441a287a6981ba1630"
uuid = "9a962f9c-6df0-11e9-0e5d-c546b8b5ee8a"
version = "1.14.0"

[[deps.DataValueInterfaces]]
git-tree-sha1 = "bfc1187b79289637fa0ef6d4436ebdfe6905cbd6"
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version = "1.0.0"

[[deps.GPUArraysCore]]
deps = ["Adapt"]
git-tree-sha1 = "6872f5ec8fd1a38880f027a26739d42dcda6691f"
uuid = "46192b85-c4d5-4398-a991-12ede77f4527"
version = "0.1.2"

[[deps.InteractiveUtils]]
deps = ["Markdown"]
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[[deps.IteratorInterfaceExtensions]]
git-tree-sha1 = "a3f24677c21f5bbe9d2a714f95dcd58337fb2856"
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[[deps.Libdl]]
uuid = "8f399da3-3557-5675-b5ff-fb832c97cbdb"

[[deps.LinearAlgebra]]
deps = ["Libdl", "libblastrampoline_jll"]
uuid = "37e2e46d-f89d-539d-b4ee-838fcccc9c8e"

[[deps.Logging]]
uuid = "56ddb016-857b-54e1-b83d-db4d58db5568"

[[deps.Markdown]]
deps = ["Base64"]
uuid = "d6f4376e-aef5-505a-96c1-9c027394607a"

[[deps.OpenBLAS_jll]]
deps = ["Artifacts", "CompilerSupportLibraries_jll", "Libdl"]
uuid = "4536629a-c528-5b80-bd46-f80d51c5b363"
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[[deps.OrderedCollections]]
git-tree-sha1 = "85f8e6578bf1f9ee0d11e7bb1b1456435479d47c"
uuid = "bac558e1-5e72-5ebc-8fee-abe8a469f55d"
version = "1.4.1"

[[deps.Random]]
deps = ["SHA", "Serialization"]
uuid = "9a3f8284-a2c9-5f02-9a11-845980a1fd5c"

[[deps.SHA]]
uuid = "ea8e919c-243c-51af-8825-aaa63cd721ce"
version = "0.7.0"

[[deps.Serialization]]
uuid = "9e88b42a-f829-5b0c-bbe9-9e923198166b"

[[deps.StaticArraysCore]]
git-tree-sha1 = "6b7ba252635a5eff6a0b0664a41ee140a1c9e72a"
uuid = "1e83bf80-4336-4d27-bf5d-d5a4f845583c"
version = "1.4.0"

[[deps.StructArrays]]
deps = ["Adapt", "DataAPI", "GPUArraysCore", "StaticArraysCore", "Tables"]
git-tree-sha1 = "b03a3b745aa49b566f128977a7dd1be8711c5e71"
uuid = "09ab397b-f2b6-538f-b94a-2f83cf4a842a"
version = "0.6.14"

[[deps.TableTraits]]
deps = ["IteratorInterfaceExtensions"]
git-tree-sha1 = "c06b2f539df1c6efa794486abfb6ed2022561a39"
uuid = "3783bdb8-4a98-5b6b-af9a-565f29a5fe9c"
version = "1.0.1"

[[deps.Tables]]
deps = ["DataAPI", "DataValueInterfaces", "IteratorInterfaceExtensions", "LinearAlgebra", "OrderedCollections", "TableTraits", "Test"]
git-tree-sha1 = "c79322d36826aa2f4fd8ecfa96ddb47b174ac78d"
uuid = "bd369af6-aec1-5ad0-b16a-f7cc5008161c"
version = "1.10.0"

[[deps.Test]]
deps = ["InteractiveUtils", "Logging", "Random", "Serialization"]
uuid = "8dfed614-e22c-5e08-85e1-65c5234f0b40"

[[deps.libblastrampoline_jll]]
deps = ["Artifacts", "Libdl", "OpenBLAS_jll"]
uuid = "8e850b90-86db-534c-a0d3-1478176c7d93"
version = "5.1.1+0"
"""

# ╔═╡ Cell order:
# ╠═cd19d0b9-d038-40a3-8b5f-e5ac50af3045
# ╠═7abef450-8091-11ed-0d95-5b0ca33aadc4
# ╠═f73f0bae-3fd6-48d0-8e8a-5f41d0c538a0
# ╠═a95d68d0-b6e0-4845-a5cc-b6afa5c33176
# ╟─00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001
# ╟─00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000002

[aplavin]

Wonder if any solutions are in sight/planned...

More generally, I often find the table viewer too "eager" to engage.

I see this very often. Like this basic example displays in a weird way:

Compare to REPL:

Also relevant #2324 #2472

[fonsp]

@ReubenJ something for you? 😗

[ReubenJ]

Ok, just to make sure I understand, we want these three:

[Dict(1 => 2), Dict(3 => 4)]

[Dict(1 => 2), Dict(3 => 4)] |> StructArray

StructArray(rand(10^1) + im * rand(10^1))

to all display in the vector form like so:

and these:

StructArray((a = [rand(Bool, 3) for i = 1:3, j = 1:2], b = [rand(Bool) for i = 1:3, j = 1:2]))

[1 2; 2 3; 3 4]

to display in the Matrix form like so:

Did I get that right?

[ReubenJ]

@laggvar @aplavin can you check that this is the behavior you'd expect?

[aplavin]

Sounds right to me!

[laggvar]

Looks great!

[fonsp]

@ReubenJ Can you make a PR?

[ReubenJ]

@fonsp sorry for the delay on this. I've come back a couple of times to try and figure out a fix, but I've not come across anything clever so far. I would ideally avoid adding a button/switch to change between table and tree views, but I don't see any way to detect whether something like a StructArray is a table, but one that we don't want to display as a table. I can't think of anything in the type information, or methods that would differentiate between, say, a StructArray and an Array.

Any ideas? Or is the display toggle a good enough solution?