No, I'm not asking for money ;-) But I am asking for something. As
you may know, there are only two regular gretl coders, myself and
Jack Lucchetti. (Others have contributed code from time to time,
for which many thanks.) It's difficult for us to keep up with all
the coding that needs to be done and also to write all the
documentation. I'm thinking that documentation is something that
others could reasonably help with, particularly in the run-up to
gretl 2.0, which is likely to come out later this year.
So here's the suggestion. Please take a look at the Gretl User's
Guide with various questions in mind:
* Are some parts out of date? (Quite likely.) If so, see if you
can update them.
* Are there things missing? The short answer is Yes. For example,
estimation of simultaneous equations systems should have a chapter
in the "Econometric methods" part of the Guide. And I started a
chapter on forecasting but left several sections empty, partly
because I don't have time to work on this and partly because I'm
no expert on the topic. You may notice other omissions.
* Is the organization wrong? (Quite possibly.) Then give us a
suggested reorganization.
If you see something that's out of date or missing, please send us
a draft of an improvement or new text. The User's Guide is in TeX
in its source form, but you don't have to write TeX if that's
unfamiliar to you. And if you're not a native English speaker,
never mind; we can edit what you send.
I'd suggest that if you'd like to write -- or at least make a
start on -- a substantial new section of the Guide, you post to
this list announcing your intention, then we won't have duplicated
effort. When you have something ready to submit, I suggest
emailing it to myself and/or Jack in the first instance, in
whatever format you find easiest.
Allin Cottrell