[Gretl-devel] GUI points (1)

At the recent gretl conference in Athens (thanks, Ioannis!) we discussed potential improvements to some aspects of the gretl GUI. To avoid overburdening this post I'll confine myself to one point here, namely access to information about function packages. (I'll get to some of the other points later.) As a reminder, in the current release we have a toolbar button labeled "fx" which supports browsing packages on the local machine or server, and we have several relevant entries under the Tools menu (access to the browsers plus other stuff). One suggestion that got some traction was a "Package" (or "Packages") top-level menu in the main window (between "Model" and "Help"). The idea was to move all the package-related menu items from under Tools to this new menu, to increase the visibility of packages. I've implemented that in current git and snapshots, but personally I'm not all that happy with the result. I don't insist on "having my own way" on this, but I'd like to explain my view and hear what people think. First, the "Package" menu has 3 blocks of material: (1) items that point to the package browsers; (2) items to do with creating/editing a function package; and (3), if you've edited any packages lately, a listing of recently opened package files. Note that only block (1), with its two items, is relevant for "general" users who aren't in the business of editing packages. All the other stuff, IMO, really belongs under the File menu because, well, it's all about files. And it looks wrong to me that it's separated so widely from "File". So I would favour putting at least the package-editing items (that is, blocks (2) and (3)) under a new entry "Function packages" in the File menu (in the section that currently has "Script files", "Session files" and "Databases"). Access to the browsers could also go there, but maybe (also?) under Help (possibly combine with the Addons item?). The File menu surely gets a lot of traffic, so having packages there would make them somewhat more visible that under Tools. I suppose there _could_ still be a "Packages" top-level item, but I'm not sure about using that space for a menu with just two items (the browsers). I'd also point out that we discussed other ways of making packages more visible, which I certainly support: sending a regular (say, monthly) email to the users list with a round-up of new or updated packages; making packages more prominent on the gretl website; pushing out info via Facebook and/or Twitter. If we can get those things going I'm not sure we need a dedicated Package menu. Allin