
Show HN: UI pattern for truncating long integers/strings in tables - jessekorzan
https://github.com/jessekorzan/truncated-cells
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kwillets
This looks good, but it reminds me of a problem I've noticed in this
situation: the truncated cells have virtually no information.

Take this example data:

    
    
        999995
        999998
        999999
    

Imagine we have 5 display digits available; the default method is to display

    
    
        99999
        99999
        99999
    

But it might be better to show the distinguishing digit. eg:

    
    
        99..5
        99..8
        99..9
    

However I don't know what the best design or display pattern for that would
be.

~~~
jessekorzan
Nice eye. Thanks for this... good enhancement. A good option for display, as
it depends on what kind of numbers are being displayed and compared (fractions
vs. big whole numbers).

~~~
kwillets
In my case I was thinking of long strings such as SQL queries. We would show a
few initial words, but in SQL they're typically the same.

For example:

    
    
        select sum(sales) from tablexyz where region = 'West'             
        select sum(sales) from tablexyz where region = 'South'
    

In this case I think we want the distinguishing word or token, and we can fill
the remaining space with text from the left, eg "select sum(sales)..'South'".

I could write out some javascript for this, but IANA front-end or css expert.

