Re: [Gretl-devel] Signalling

Gretl will not get the visibility with Hansl. Sure Hansl is great. One can even argue that it is better than Stata, R, etc. but those already have a huge share of the users, many developers, thousands of packages etc. So this is like complaining everyone is using Windows (on the desktop) while Linux is so great. It is the network effect, stupid! Gretl has always had and still has the comparative advantage in the area of easy to use, menu driven software complementary to R etc. As can be seen from Eviews, SPSS... there is need for such programs and, unlike programming languages, there are really no good and free alternatives for such GUI based programs. Unfortunately, gretl has not been doing well in improving its GUI facilities. Sure there has been some work, most notably the tabbed model output. However, there are many many missing features, inconsistencies, an increasing feel of loss of intuitiveness due to the lack of a general design direction. It is also looking increasingly dated and convoluted. Moreover, the decision to unsupport localized input was a big, big, big mistake. If a spreadsheet program such as Excel, Calc, Gnumeric or Google Spread said they won't support decimal comma inputs because that is not very useful and/or hard to do, everyone would laugh. However, gretl decided somehow along the way that such way would be acceptable for most users. Hah. Anyway, if you want gretl to become more visible and popular, then you have to see and remember its strengths, and where it needs to fit and fill an important need in the world of scientific software. Those areas are (1) a modern GUI based approach (supported by good scripting) for doing modern econometric analysis, (2) excellent localization and internationalization support, (3) a focus on teaching econometrics at the both basic and advanced level. Unless the above becomes a priority once again, the year of gretl is not coming. No my friend. 'Nuff said. Talha On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 8:38 AM, Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti <r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it&gt; wrote: -- “Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.” – Herbert C. Hoover (1874-1964) --