I've taken a first step in modifying the gretl directory structure, in CVS and the current Windows snapshot, following the discussions here a few days back. I've split the old "userdir", which served both as the repository for automatically generated files and as the default location for explicit file input/output on the user's part, into two: (a) "dotdir": this holds the automatic files. It is not user-selectable (directories of this sort are rarely if ever user-configurable). On unix-type systems it is HOME/.gretl, and on MS Windows it is APPDATA\gretl, where "APPDATA" is a standard Windows API thing, localized and user-ized. It may expand to something like "C:\Documents and Settings\cottrell\Application data" (b) "workdir": the default path for explicit user file I/O. This defaults to HOME/gretl on unix, and to PERSONAL\gretl on Windows. "PERSONAL" is again localized and user-ized. It may expand to something like "C:\Documents and Settings\cottrell\My Documents" Unlike dotdir, this is user-configurable. For previous gretl installations, it inherits the old "userdir" setting; for new installs it can be changed under Tools/Preferences, as before. I considered using just HOME (unix) or PERSONAL (Windows) for the default workdir (without appending "/gretl"). But gretl writes some files to this directory without explicit GUI filename selection (e.g. the eqnprint and tabprint commands, the gnuplot command in batch mode), and it seemed like bad form to dump stuff into HOME or PERSONAL directly. If you don't want to use {HOME,PERSONAL}/gretl for this purpose, change the preference and blow the unneeded directory away. A couple of other changes: (1) The Windows installer no longer prompts for, or creates, a per-user working directory. This is handled at run-time: the appropriate "dotdir" and default "workdir" are created for the current user, if they don't already exist (and if the default workdir is not contradicted by an existing registry setting). (2) Since the CWD (current working directory) is pretty much inscrutable on Windows, we no longer use this as the default for the "shelldir" variable: this now defaults to the "workdir". (You can launch GUI program from a Windows console, but I don't think anyone but me ever does that!) Since (a) OS X is very much GUI-oriented and (b) gretl from the OS X dmg starts up inside Gretl.app, which is definitely not a sensible location for writing anything, I've also arranged for shelldir to default to workdir on OS X. On unix, the shelldir still defaults to whatever is the CWD on startup. This could perhaps be user-configurable (CWD vs. workdir), but it would be a somewhat arcane item. As I say, this is a first step. I have not yet done anything about automatically changing workdir based on the last directory visited via the file open/save dialog. I'm not sure that's a good idea, though it's open for discussion. Allin.