Motivation
I have spent a lot of time formatting tables that conform to APA7 guidelines. It is not fun, and I do not enjoy doing it. Since the APA7 rules are fixed, I knew I could write a utility that would cover a majority of use cases and, therefore, improve my productivity. While I was writing the Javascript to format the HTML/CSS dynamically, it occurred to me that such a tool would benefit countless other researchers. This epiphany led me to integrate this tool into GoFactr and help my peers. You can find the table page at GoFactr.
Table Usage
A spreadsheet-like interface (handsontable is an excellent product that is dead-simple to use) was a must since almost everyone is familiar with these programs. The formatting occurs under the hood with support for single- and split-headers. Greek letters are supported by using HTML5 codes, and super-/sub- scripts use TEX notation (^{} for superscript and _{} for subscripts). Bold and Italics can be applied to the cell with the buttons or markdown (**Bold** or *Italics*). My plan is to develop standard formatting with documentation, but there is enough there to get started.
Table Example 1
A single header example is shown below. The HTML code, —, define the long dash (em-dash); while asterisk for the p-value is, *. The superscript in the footer is set by ^{ a}, in the cell and the footer location. Leaving the footer cell blank removes it from the table. You can download Table Example 1 here or the .docx file here.
Pressing the eye on the toolbar brings up the preview. There are two download options, an image as a png file or a .docx file.
Table Example 2
The second example is a split header shown below. The table is created by pressing the double-column button (4th button from the right) in the toolbar. Items are grouped by having the same Group Header (see Factor Loading in the cells). The length of a cell is manipulated by changing the cell width. Cell A is much larger than B or C, which lengthens it in the preview. A smaller dash, –, captures the suppressed loadings. You can download the Example 2 table here or the .docx file here.
This spreadsheet results in the following table. Again the table can be saved as a png image or .docx file:
Saving Tables
Saving the tables for later use or creating a template for commonly used items is done by pressing the disk button. It downloads a .json file that you can import using the file import button. If you’re handy at scripting, you can add this to your workflow to create automatic tables!
Future Work
I plan to standardize the formatting and add a cheat sheet. I would also like to add downloadable templates for commonly used tables: T-Tests, ANOVA, Factor Analysis, etc. Finally, the .docx footer doesn’t honor the paragraph breaks, and I need to fix that. If you have suggestions, feature requests, or find a bug, please shoot me an email at ryan.sanchez@gofactr.com.
Cheers ~
Ryan
