Some time ago it was asked whether the structure of the manual could be optimized. Here's a suggestion which probably doesn't attain the optimum but IMHO could be an improvement: - Introduce a new part "Programming in gretl (a.k.a. introduction to 'hansl')". This part would (initially) consist of chapters 9 through 13 (maybe also 14). - Convert chapter 12 (lists and strings) into sections of chapter 11 (data types). I also thought about doing the same with chapter 13 (matrices), but matrices are so important and chapter 13 so long that it probably deserves to be left as is. - move chapter 10 (functions) to the end of the new hansl part (i.e. after what's now chapter 13 or chapter 14) what do you think?

On 06/27/2011 09:56 AM, Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti wrote: > On Sun, 26 Jun 2011, Sven Schreiber wrote: > >> Some time ago it was asked whether the structure of the manual could be >> optimized. Here's a suggestion which probably doesn't attain the optimum >> but IMHO could be an improvement: >> >> - Introduce a new part "Programming in gretl (a.k.a. introduction to >> 'hansl')". This part would (initially) consist of chapters 9 through 13 >> (maybe also 14). >> >> - Convert chapter 12 (lists and strings) into sections of chapter 11 >> (data types). I also thought about doing the same with chapter 13 >> (matrices), but matrices are so important and chapter 13 so long that it >> probably deserves to be left as is. >> >> - move chapter 10 (functions) to the end of the new hansl part (i.e. >> after what's now chapter 13 or chapter 14) >> >> what do you think? > > Actually, I think that at this stage hansl deserves its own manual, more > or less like Doornik's "Introduction to Ox" > (http://www.doornik.com/ox/OxIntro.pdf). It's something I've been > thinking about for a while. The only problem is that it'd be rather time > consuming to write, and I'm not exactly idle in this period. But what is the advantage of having a separate file for the Intro to hansl? A dedicated part in the manual under that heading seems clear enough to me, and you don't get a proliferation of documentation locations/files.