On Thu, 8 Oct 2015, Oleg wrote:

Dear Allin,
The new look of the package editor window is very nice:
edit facilities and auto-new-line.

Glad you like it!

My question is about pdf
After the message "text help will be lost"
I feared to experiment further.
Does it mean I can make pdf everywhere I
wish: from latex or libre office odt and just load it from the file-browser?

We need to find a way to make this more transparent, but here's how things stand at present:

* Suppose you create a function package via the GUI and add help text using the text window supplied by gretl. Then when you save the package as a gfn file, the help text is embedded in the gfn.

* If you decide to provide PDF help it is up to you to create a suitable PDF file (as you say, using LaTeX or libreoffice or whatever). This must have the same basename as the package (e.g. foo.pdf for a package named "foo"), and it should be placed in the same directory as the gfn file. Then when you upload the package (or build a zip file, under the "Save..." menu) gretl will create a zip file holding the gfn and the pdf.

Also, in this case the embedded help text inside the gfn file is replaced by a reference to the pdf file, as in

<help>
pdfdoc:foo.pdf
</help>

This is the sense in which any pre-existing plain-text help is "lost": it's not stored inside the gfn any more. (But if you have the help text saved in a file of its own that won't be touched.)