Option to default to mo.plain for dataframes?

[foxcroftjn]

As the result of a recent change (#1697), the default rendering of dataframes now uses mo.ui.table by default. While I am pleased that mo.plain exists, I find that I am typing it a lot and this is creating some unpleasant friction.

I liked the previous ability to set default table display options globally. Before this change, I could add a line like pl.Config.set_tbl_rows(50) right after import polars as pl and this would set the default number of rows shown in tables throughout the entire notebook.

As best I can tell, there is no way to provide default arguments to the default mo.ui.table function call (option A), or revert to using mo.plain by default instead of mo.ui.table via a configuration option (either at a global level or a notebook level) (option B).

I would prefer option B, and am hoping for some feedback about the following:

1. Have I missed a configuration option that would solve this problem?
2. Is marimo aiming to be feature-light and opinionated, and would therefore consider an option for choosing a default between mo.plain and mo.ui.table to be bloat?
3. If the answer to the above two questions is no, would the maintainers be willing to add a configuration option to ~/.marimo.toml to select a default between mo.plain and mo.ui.table?

I appreciate any feedback on these questions!

[akshayka]

Thanks for the thoughtful discussion.

We could consider adding a notebook configuration to default to mo.plain for dataframes. I'm not sure if it would be global or per notebook.

If we instead provided a configuration for the default number of rows shown in ui.table, would that be satisfactory?

[foxcroftjn]

A configuration option, either global or per notebook, would definitely address this to my satisfaction.

To elaborate on why I prefer mo.plain:

1. I make heavy use of marimo's ability to export notebooks as static HTML documents. The tables generated by mo.ui.table are not ideal in this context, as they contain a variety of non-functioning UI elements (i.e., download, search, everything in the menu that appears when you click a column name). When viewing the static HTML page, a user only learns that the search does not work after clicking the search button, typing a query, and pressing enter.
2. I work with very large dataframes, and there is sometimes a noticeable delay for mo.ui.table to generate the column summaries. When I am frequently re-running a cell while incrementally building a complex query, this delay is frustrating. I know this can be turned off via the show_column_summaries option, but like the page_size option, there is no way to set this argument globally and I don't want the friction of repeatedly wrapping dataframes queries in mo.ui.table(..., show_column_summaries=False) any more than mo.plain(...).

Unfortunately, this means that a configuration for the default number of rows shown in ui.table would not really address my use case. I appreciate your willingness to hear my use case out! marimo is an invaluable tool to me, and I use it daily.

[akshayka]

@foxcroftjn — the next release will include a user configuration option to default to the plain dataframe viewer. Thanks for your patience!

See #2067