On Tue, 11 Jul 2017, Summers, Peter wrote:
 Allin et al,
 In my playing around with various scripts in Julia, octave and now 
 python, I've come up with a sort of "wish list" for gretl's script 
 editor. All of these refer to editing a script in one of those 
 languages (e.g., via "script files > New script > Python script"), 
 not via use of a "foreign" block in the main gretl script editor. 
 In no particular order:
  1.  Currently it seems that only one foreign script can be open
  at once. Could subsequent scripts open in a new tab like what
  happen in the gretl script editor? 
Well, as many scripts as you like of whatever sort can be opened in 
separate windows, but it's true that the tabbed editor is currently 
only available for native scripts. Maybe that could be extended.
  2.  Related to this, if I'm editing a Python script and want to
  open another one, the file search dialogue defaults to looking
  for *.inp files. It's easy enough to change that, but could that
  default to the type of script currently being edited? 
I guess that wouldn't be too difficult, I'll take a look.
  3.  It seems that only gretl scripts support smart indenting. Can 
 that be generalized? 
That's a good deal more difficult. Inside gretl, we know gretl 
syntax, and therefore what sort of statements call for increased or
reduced indentation. For foreign scripts, not so much. However, I 
suppose it's possible that gtksourceview *.lang files contain some 
info on this; again, I'll take a look.
 I realize that these things may all have different degrees of 
 difficulty, and none are critical IMO. However it occurred to me 
 that one potential way to expose more people to gretl could be as 
 a front-end to one or more of these other languages. In my own 
 case, as I was going through the process of setting up Atom/Juno 
 for Julila, I thought "hey, why can't I just use gretl's Julia 
 editor?". 
Yes, good point. For my part I generally find it less painful to use 
Stata via gretl's "foreign" apparatus than directly ;-)
Allin