Re: [Gretl-devel] dataset browser: add type/structure information
On Wed, 27 Sep 2017, Sven Schreiber wrote:
Hi,
I repeatedly find myself looking in the built-in dataset collection to open a
dataset with a certain structure (e.g. for testing, or for teaching). I find
it hard to locate for example a panel dataset with T > N. Couldn't that kind
of information be displayed in additional columns? (So far I see only "File"
and "Summary" there.)
I can see a case for a simple additional column, say "dimension",
which could have, for example, "n = 1200" for a cross-sectional
dataset, "T = 96" for time-series, or "N = 20, T = 30" for a panel.
Here's a fairly simple rainy-day task for somebody: go through the
supplied data files (maybe in the first instance just the ones under
the "Gretl" tab) and compose a little text file on the same format
as the existing "descriptions" file, so for instance:
"abdata","N = 140, T = 9"
"anscombe","n = 11"
"arma","T = 624"
...
If anyone does that, I'll be happy to arrange for it to be picked up
in the same way as the current "descriptions" file and displayed in
the GUI.
I'm aware that we _could_ read that info automatically from the gdt
files, but in the interest of responsiveness I think I'd rather not
(gunzip and) parse a bunch of XML files on the user's accessing a
tab in the data browser -- though I suppose that might be worth the
experiment (how long does it really take?). Downside for me: I would
have to code that experiment!
Allin