Sorting

[1beb]

This is a post-processing action that should happen after the call to crosstabs but before the call to writeLatex or writeExcel. It is expected that there will be many exceptional cases. It would be simple to apply, crosstab wide, a sort. However, it's likely that groups of variables will need to be sorted in the same way. This suggests that a passthrough function with a list of variables included would be the clearest method for the user. Although themeNew already has infrastructure for this type of formatting, we feel that it is already too complex additional functionality that manages the structure of the data in addition to the visual presentation would be confusing for the user.

Add two functions:

sort_alpha(ct, vars, descending, pin_to_top, pin_to_bottom)
sort_numeric(ct, vars, descending, pin_to_top, pin_to_bottom)

Usage example:

ct = crosstabs(ds) 
ct = sort_numeric(ct, vars)
writeLatex()

The function acts as a passthrough that could be applied to a group of variables or to a single variable allowing us to create exceptions.

ct = crosstabs(ds) 
ct = sort_numeric(ct, vars=c("a", "b"))
ct = sort_numeric(ct, vars=c("c"), pin_to_bottom = "Don't know")
writeLatex(ct)

• Update vignette with sorting example
• Tests for sort_numeric
• Tests for sort_alpha
• Add functions sort_numeric and sort_alpha (likely a generic with a sort type flag)
• Works for toplines categorical, categorical_array