[Gretl-devel] Bundles in function packages and their GUI treatment

Hi, there is a trend towards the use of bundles in hansl. And when it comes to using them for functions or function packages it is nice to use them in hansl, that is in script format. However, for GUI-gretl bundles are currently not so nice. I have found no way to create them somehow from the menus. And consider the following situation (which is inspired from my attempts to update the interface of one of my existing packages): You have been given a function package that takes a bundle as an argument (for example, to avoid an excessively long list of optional arguments). If you run that package in the GUI you get the window that prompts you to specify the argument. But you can only enter an existing bundle into the argument field. If you have no matching bundle already, you would have to abort this call and instead go back and pre-specify the bundle argument with its contents, before you can re-try to run the package. Attention, utopian wishlist ahead: It would be optimal if you could create the bundle on the fly, like you can do with lists of series, or matrices. Another cool thing would actually be if, when a function in a package takes a bundle argument, it can somehow communicate which bundle members it expects; the datatype, which name, etc. Something like: <utopian> function void bcheck( bundle b[int myparam[0:1:0.5] "which fraction", matrix data]) </utopian> where the caller would be expected to pass a bundle, say "bob", with the members "bob.myparam and bob.data". For the sake of the example I have also included the gimmicks like default values and explanatory string of the sub-arguments. Ok, but the main point is, the GUI interface for the calling of packages is so cool without bundles, it really is a pity if you have to decide between that coolness and the use of bundles. thanks and sorry for the long post, sven