Re: [Gretl-devel] Built-in spreadsheet improvement

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Allin Cottrell <cottrell(a)wfu.edu&gt; wrote: > I think it would be more > productive to spend time making "Data append/update" easier and > more fool-proof rather than trying to extend gretl's spreadsheet > capabilities: I agree. A couple of suggestions: 1. One thing that would be an improvement is that presently yo must have exactly the same number of observations in the data to be imported as you have in gretl. If you have 1990-2006 in gretl and 1980 - 2009 in a csv or in Excel, gretl says "Data frequency does not match". The improvement would be to use the same dialog that it shows up when you /main/file/open/import/excel, which lets you choose the first observation, and also don't stop if you are importing from a file with observations ranging from 1990-2009 due to the 'extra' 3 final observations. 2. The spreadsheet import dialog could a sample of the first observations to be imported (just write a ascii-formatted table with the first cells to be imported). 1. That dialog resizes badly, with lots of wasted space. 2. The *sheet to import from* list box defaults to an unnecessarily small size that only shows 3 lines at a time; most my spreadsheets have way more that 3 sheets. And scrolling is too slow (default gtk control settings?). 3. Csv imports could also benefit from a preview, even in an ascii-formatted table way. 3. When you drag and drop a file into gretl's window, it asks to close the current session and open the draganddropped file. Maybe that dialog could be changed into: "You drag and dropped a file, do you want to: [append data] [replace data] [open in another session] [do nothing - cancel]". 4. GUI tool to ODBC. 1. (Don't know how complicated this could be) Ideally, all excel imports (and all non transitional -as csv- formats which have an ODBC driver) should be done through ODBC, in order to easily expand a dataset or update it. It should be done transparently: when the open function is called for the first time, gretl pragmatically creates the datasource connection. It involves, apparently, writing a single string to the registry. 5. Maybe the excel addin I wrote some time back could be improved upon with some help... Even as it is, I use it regularly. I no programmer myself and the same as I said before applies: maybe I'm asking to switch from gtk to Qt as lightly as I'd ask for a pencil...