4:45 p.m.
Hi,
I'm wondering whether in recent months / years there has been a change
in gretl behavior which causes problems with the formatting and/or
display of the help text of function packages.
For example, about three weeks ago I noticed such a problem with the
ModRS_test package, and I contacted the author about it. (Update
pending, in principle.)
But now I'm seeing a similar (although less severe) problem with Artur's
CvDataSplitter, or gregory_hansen. There are more, I believe, and it is
becoming impractical to have all those packages updated.
Speculations about the cause:
- gretl's relatively recent support for markdown might perhaps have side
effects for non-markdown stuff?
- I'm using the new Windows GTK3/ucrt gretl version, could this be a factor?
- ...?
First of all, the question is, do you see what I mean?
thanks
sven
6:02 p.m.
On Wed, Oct 23, 2024 at 4:45 PM Sven Schreiber
<sven.schreiber(a)fu-berlin.de> wrote:
I'm wondering whether in recent months / years there has been a change
in gretl behavior which causes problems with the formatting and/or
display of the help text of function packages.
For example, about three weeks ago I noticed such a problem with the
ModRS_test package, and I contacted the author about it. (Update
pending, in principle.)
But now I'm seeing a similar (although less severe) problem with Artur's
CvDataSplitter, or gregory_hansen. There are more, I believe, and it is
becoming impractical to have all those packages updated.
Speculations about the cause:
- gretl's relatively recent support for markdown might perhaps have side
effects for non-markdown stuff?
Yes, possible.
- I'm using the new Windows GTK3/ucrt gretl version, could this
be a factor?
No.
It seems like the "don't respect line-breaks within paragraphs"
policy, which is wanted for markdown text, may have spilled over to
the display of "traditional" plain text help. I'll look into this.
Allin
3:37 p.m.
On Wed, Oct 23, 2024 at 4:45 PM Sven Schreiber
<sven.schreiber(a)fu-berlin.de> wrote:
I'm wondering whether in recent months / years there has been a change
in gretl behavior which causes problems with the formatting and/or
display of the help text of function packages.
Yes, I think so. Probably since gretl 2023b the "truly plain text"
help for some function packages has been misidentified as markdown due
to use of a too-simple heuristic, and that can lead to mangling of
plain text in which spaces and newlines are used for formatting.
I believe there are 10 affected packages, out of the 168 packages
currently on the server. This is now fixed (or at least mostly fixed,
there may be a little more to be done) in git and snapshots.
Allin
6:32 p.m.
Am 25.10.2024 um 21:37 schrieb Cottrell, Allin:
On Wed, Oct 23, 2024 at 4:45 PM Sven Schreiber
<sven.schreiber(a)fu-berlin.de> wrote:
> I'm wondering whether in recent months / years there has been a change
> in gretl behavior which causes problems with the formatting and/or
> display of the help text of function packages.
Yes, I think so. Probably since gretl 2023b the "truly plain text"
help for some function packages has been misidentified as markdown due
to use of a too-simple heuristic, and that can lead to mangling of
plain text in which spaces and newlines are used for formatting.
I believe there are 10 affected packages, out of the 168 packages
currently on the server. This is now fixed (or at least mostly fixed,
there may be a little more to be done) in git and snapshots.
Thanks, Allin, it's looking good on the few examples I've checked. Can
you enumerate your list of the 10 packages? Maybe we should write to the
authors to avoid confusion.
cheers
sven
7:09 p.m.
On Sat, 26 Oct 2024, Sven Schreiber wrote:
Am 25.10.2024 um 21:37 schrieb Cottrell, Allin:
> On Wed, Oct 23, 2024 at 4:45 PM Sven Schreiber
> <sven.schreiber(a)fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>>
>> I'm wondering whether in recent months / years there has been a change
>> in gretl behavior which causes problems with the formatting and/or
>> display of the help text of function packages.
>
> Yes, I think so. Probably since gretl 2023b the "truly plain text"
> help for some function packages has been misidentified as markdown due
> to use of a too-simple heuristic, and that can lead to mangling of
> plain text in which spaces and newlines are used for formatting.
>
> I believe there are 10 affected packages, out of the 168 packages
> currently on the server. This is now fixed (or at least mostly fixed,
> there may be a little more to be done) in git and snapshots.
Thanks, Allin, it's looking good on the few examples I've checked.
Can you enumerate your list of the 10 packages? Maybe we should
write to the authors to avoid confusion.
OK, here are the 10 packages:
gregory_hansen (Artur)
CvDataSplitter (Artur)
VARrec (Artur)
gqtest (Oleh)
a_eff (Oleh)
tobit_mfx (Oleh)
GlobalFactors (Ioannis)
ModRS_test (Daniel V-S)
VSG_test (Daniel V-S)
summary_xy (Yi-Nung)
These packages have two things in common: (a) their help text
contains the '#' character, which is suggestive of markdown, but (b)
they predate gretl 2023b (2023-07-21), which was the first gretl
release to support use of markdown -- so in fact gretl should have
disregarded the presence of '#'.
Allin
11:10 a.m.
Am 26.10.2024 um 01:09 schrieb Allin Cottrell:
On Sat, 26 Oct 2024, Sven Schreiber wrote:
> Thanks, Allin, it's looking good on the few examples I've checked.
> Can you enumerate your list of the 10 packages? Maybe we should write
> to the authors to avoid confusion.
OK, here are the 10 packages:
gregory_hansen (Artur)
CvDataSplitter (Artur)
VARrec (Artur)
gqtest (Oleh)
a_eff (Oleh)
tobit_mfx (Oleh)
GlobalFactors (Ioannis)
ModRS_test (Daniel V-S)
VSG_test (Daniel V-S)
summary_xy (Yi-Nung)
These packages have two things in common: (a) their help text contains
the '#' character, which is suggestive of markdown, but (b) they
predate gretl 2023b (2023-07-21), which was the first gretl release to
support use of markdown -- so in fact gretl should have disregarded
the presence of '#'.
Thanks, I sent a message to the relevant authors of this list.
One follow-up question about your commit [6fa6d4],
https://sourceforge.net/p/gretl/git/ci/6fa6d46b63f5f1ad61fd9235da16528513...
In a (very informative!) comment there you write "we assume that
packages with an earlier [than gretl 2023b] last-modified date can't be
using [markdown]". But some packages might have already exploited the
functionality before the official release of 2023b, so I wonder if that
heuristic is too strict. (Don't know whether any packages fall into that
category, however.)
cheers
sven
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5 comments
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participants (3)
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Allin Cottrell -
Cottrell, Allin
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Sven Schreiber