Re: [Gretl-devel] remaining feature to-do list
On Wed, 27 Nov 2013, Logan Kelly wrote:
Three things that I would love to see in 2.0 (or possibly 3.0):
1. A loop structure like the parfor in Matlab, i. e. a parrell
processed loop.
Actually, we're working on this. Our current idea is to introduce a
similar construct, but slightly different. Ideas are vague at this moment,
so leave us some time to have a few concepts solidify in our minds.
2. A special series data type that can hold text. This would be
useful
for labeling a discreet variable, and could be used for making nice
labes on factorized plots.
You're right, that would be very useful. To some extent, some of it is
already in. For example, try this:
(a) save the data below as a csv file named "mixed.csv"
<csv>
alpha,num
foo,3
foo,2
bar,3
foo,1
bar,3
baz,1
bar,2
foo,0
baz,1
</csv>
(b) run
<hansl>
open mixed.csv
freq alpha
xtab num alpha
</hansl>
Adding something similar to, say, factorized boxplots shouldn't be too
hard. However, you can't really operate on the labels yet. Allin and I
have thought we may introduce a new datatype (the string array), which
could then be used to establish a mapping values of a series and a
corresponding string representation in sach a way that this mapping can be
easy to manipulate by the end user. This is exactly the concept of "value
labels" in spss, or "label values" in stata.
3. More integration of LaTeX. Maybe a LaTeX function like gnuplot().
Allin and I weren't sure of what you meant exactly. We thought it might be
a nice idea to introduce a new function that, given a matrix, would return
a string with a complete LaTeX "tabular" environment. Would this be
similar to what you had in mind?
-------------------------------------------------------
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
-------------------------------------------------------