Re: [Gretl-devel] GUI points (1)

On Sun, 18 Jun 2017, Sven Schreiber wrote: >> 3 - Assuming the user hasn't concluded by now that there's no way of doing >> this in gretl, try the Help menu. Maybe even open the User's Guide and the >> Command Reference, and maybe use the "Find" function of her pdf reader. >> Nope, fixed-effects Poisson isn't there. > > Good point, and actually -- why not? I mean, why not include a list of > function packages as a further appendix in the user guide? (Basically the > same list which is at: > http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/gretl/cgi-bin/gretldata.cgi?opt=SHOW_FUNCS.) > > Of course that list as copied into the guide will become slowly outdated as > packages are added and updated quicker than new gretl versions are > released, but that isn't a big problem IMO. The appendix in the user guide > could start with a reminder "current as of the date of release; for the > up-to-date list choose File/Function packages/On server" or something. Allin just added a "packages" entry to the Help menu, which IMO makes the point sort of moot.

One thing that could be quite useful in the same vein could be some sort of search facility: suppose we had, under the help menu, a "Search" entry, by clicking which you get a text box. You enter a term (say "panel Poisson", to continue with the example), and you have an automatic text search through the pdf doc, the info files of the packages on the server, and possibly google (suitably filtered) as a last resort. That should do it, I think. I believe Stata's got something like that. Implementing this would not be trivial, but I guess many users would like it.