Unclear error when trying to pass pandas into perspective table

[timkpaine]

Feature Request

Description of Problem:

pyarrow is necessary for perspective to convert pandas data frames, but we do an unconditional import in rust code which leads to a clear error message but unclear stack trace (disappears inside the rust code so can't see clear usage of pyarrow).

import pandas as pd
from perspective.widget import PerspectiveWidget


df = pd.DataFrame({"a": [1,2,3]})
PerspectiveWidget(df)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/timkpaine/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Downloads/tmp/tmp.py", line 6, in <module>
    PerspectiveWidget(df)
  File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.11/site-packages/perspective/widget/__init__.py", line 155, in __init__
    self.load(data, **self._options)
  File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.11/site-packages/perspective/widget/__init__.py", line 160, in load
    super(PerspectiveWidget, self).load(data, **options)
  File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.11/site-packages/perspective/widget/viewer/viewer.py", line 199, in load
    self._table = perspective.table(data, name=name, **options)
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.11/site-packages/perspective/__init__.py", line 43, in table
    return GLOBAL_CLIENT.table(*args, **kwargs)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pyarrow'