Fix some columns in scrolling data viewer

There are some important features missing in the data viewer, one of the most used tool of data analysis.

In horizontal scrolling a big table with lots of column (it's very common to have more columns than one screen can fit), it will be very helpful to fix the row name column so that it's always visible(i.e. always keep it within screen with scrolling). This has been asked before:

https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115007471508-Add-column-number-fix-row-names-in-data-viewer
https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/222661367-Data-Viewer-Row-Name-Visibility
https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/200632328-fixed-column-and-row-names-in-data-browser

In same direction, sometimes we also want to fix certain columns so that it remains visible when scrolled horizontally. The row name column is just a special case of this request.

I agree that pinning columns and/or row names would be useful with very wide tables.

If you’d like to write this up as a feature request (IDE feature requests are now being collected on GitHub), start here: RStudio IDE Guide: Writing Good Feature Requests

I opened issue here.

I was hesitating to post on github issue directly for RStudio feature request, because there are 763 open issues now...

There is definitely value to kicking around ideas here first, to see if there are any workable alternatives (or, sometimes the features people are looking for actually exist already but are flying under the radar). But my understanding is that the IDE team prefers to have “official”, well-crafted feature requests all in one place (they’re not necessarily regularly surfing these forums).

Speaking of workable alternatives (and realizing that feature requests are never a guarantee of implementation so it’s useful to look for workarounds), would this Addin be helpful for your use case?