Automatic summary table display for tabular data?

[mbostock]

Related to custom inspectors #51, we could automatically detect tabular data and give a better default display using the summary table #23.

[mootari]

Could it alternatively become a "display mode" option on the display() helper?

[mbostock]

Like display(data, "table")? Yeah maybe. I also thought about inspect(data) as a way to opt-out of the automatically-inferred display mode.

[mbostock]

SQL cells use Inputs.table. But it would be nice to have column summaries.

[Fil]

SQL cells have the added benefit that we can use the SQL engine to create the histograms (and other summaries), and (later) the filtering.

[mbostock]

Given that was have SQL cells using Inputs.table, I think this issue is basically covered by #23 — we’ll switch SQL cells to use that when it’s ready, and we’d have a programmatic way of getting the same display from JavaScript if desired. But I don’t think we’ll do “automatic display modes” where we change the behavior of the default inspector.