RFC Name : ... |
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About this document
This is an official Request for Comment (RFC) for General text file import framework.
For details on RFCs in general, check out the Wikipedia Entry: Request for Comments (RFCs)
Status
10/11/2006 Still under construction.
How to Comment
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Proposal
This RFC is for the new import framework for general text files.
Biological Questions / Use Cases
Most of biological data files are available in text or Microsoft Excel file format. By implementing this function, users can import following files:
- Tab/comma/space delimited text tables
- Excel files
General Notes
Requirements
This project contains two main components:
- File readers
- for text files
- for Excel (xsl) files
- Swing GUI
To provide maximm flexibility for users, the GUI should accept the following:
- Selectable mapping keys. Users can map text
Deferred Items
Open Issues
The following is a prototype GUI for the file importer:
http://chianti.ucsd.edu/kono/images/fileImport1.png
Features requested in the Hackason (first 2 days of Cytoscape retreat 2006) were the following:
Direct import from Excel files (.xsl) This can be done using open source library POI.
- Support for multiple delimiters.
Network file import. This is related to RFC 16 (text table network import).
Inteligent file type checker. If the input file data looks like existing data file format, apply a template.
Backward Compatibility
Expected growth and plan for growth
References
Implementation Plan
Prototype readers and GUI is done.
Comments
I think it should be useful if the text table import could be done via pasting (clipboard). I imagine a menu item Edit->Paste As..-> attributes table. I expect it is just a matter of parsing a stream of space or tab delimited chars...