Re: [Gretl-devel] named lists in GUI
On Fri, 2 Mar 2012, Allin Cottrell wrote:
I've now added the following in CVS:
(a) If you ctrl-click, shift-click or swipe in the main window to
select more than one series, then right-click, one of the options is
"Define list". Choose this, type in a name, and you've got a list.
Nice and intuitive.
(b) In the model specification dialog, named lists are shown along
with series in the left-hand "available vars" box.
Real cool. I propose to extend this to other similar windows, like the GUI
hooks for pca, mahal, corr etcetera.
This is not yet in the snapshots for Windows and OS X; I'd like
to
see a little testing first.
Nothing to report here.
A few design decisions arose:
(1) How should lists be visually distinguished from series in the
selector? I could colorize list names, but right now they appear in
bold face. This seemed to me slightly more suggestive of what's
going on (list = bulkier object than series).
Nice and intuitive.
(2) Where should lists be placed in the selection box? I've
placed
them after the constant (which by gretl convention always comes
first, if applicable) but before the series. My thinking is that
lists in the GUI are likely to be most useful when the dataset
contains many series, in which case you wouldn't want to have to
scroll down past all the series to find your lists.
Makes good sense to me.
(3) What should happen with the business of "pre-select the
first
variable on the left" (skipping the constant) in the selection box?
(I mean, when you open the dialog, one series is already selected
for you.) Well, the rationale for this is that the most efficient
way of using the model spec dialog from scratch is: first
double-click on your dependent variable, then swipe and right-click
to define a set of independent variables -- and in many datasets the
first series is the one that one is likely to wish to take as
dependent. Since a list can't serve as dependent variable I've made
it so that the first plain series is pre-selected.
Same as above.
(4) This is larger: What should happen on the right when one clicks
a list from the left into a right-hand side box? [...]
My vote goes to: cash out the individual series. First, that's what you
get on output; besides, nice as this new feature is, if you plan to make
heavy use of lists (adding/dropping series, lagging lists etc) you'll
probably want to do it through a script anyway.
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Economia
Università Politecnica delle Marche
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www.econ.univpm.it/lucchetti