Re: [Gretl-users] Menu re-structuring
On Fri, 14 Jul 2006, Talha Yalta wrote:
I tried the new snapshot and like it much better than the old
one.
Good, thanks.
1- First of all, I know everything will look a little better
when those few items move away to the preferences menu later.
(such as the seed generator and missing value code)
Yes, I plan to put the "seed" setting into the dialog box where
a random variable is defined. It's not really a "Preference",
but a one-time choice.
I think you misunderstand the deal with the missing value code.
It's not a "preference" at all. It's there to handle the case
where you import a data set in which the missing value code is
-333 or something weird, and you want to tell gretl to set all
instances of -333 to NA. It's under the Variable menu too in
case you've appended a particular variable that has a
non-standard missing value code.
But since gretl can handle most sane NAs, there's a case for
saying that these items are too arcane to be in the GUI menus at
all.
2- Don't you think it would be a little better if "new
data"
was the first item and "clear data" is down next to "exit"?
I disagree. "New data" is a little-used item (one is much more
likely to open or import data than to construct a data set from
zero), so it shouldn't be at the top of the menu. And I like
Cri's idea that all the "data set" items should be together,
thus "clear data" belongs where it is, IMO.
4- There is a menu called "variable" but going into the
data
menu there are several items with the sub menu "all variables
- selected variables". One cannot help but think there must be
a better way of doing this but I am not sure know how.
The Variable menu is, I think, fairly clear once you get used to
it: it has all sorts of things you can do with just one, single
variable. (Notice that it goes disabled whenever you select
more than one variable in the main window.)
The business of handling multiple selection of variables is not
totally consistent (though I've made some improvements lately).
In most cases, when you have more than one variable selected in
the main window, that selection is "respected" when you execute
a multi-variable command.
For example, select 3 variable in the main window and go to
Data/Correlation matrix/selected variables -- or go to /Add/logs
of selected variables.
On the other hand, selecting a bunch of variables in the main
window is not sufficient to provide the structure needed for
some commands (e.g. a model -- which one is the dependent
variable? -- or multiple scatter plots -- which one goes on the
Y axis?) In these cases you have to use a specific selection
dialog.
But if you spot any cases where the main window selection should
be sufficient, yet you're forced through a selection dialog,
then let me know -- that is probably a design bug.
5- I showed the new layout to my wife who is using eviews
constantly for her dissertation. Her opinion is interesting:
She thinks gretl somehow looks simple compared to other
programs.
Well, yes, it's supposed to be readily usable! IMO the Eviews
interface is a real piece of obfuscation. I suppose it makes
people feel very clever when they figure out how to use it.
1- A splash screen might be nice. I am pretty good with
graphical design, I can come up with something nice if you
want this and tell me a general framework to start with (size
theme etc).
I'm not averse to a splash screen, so long as you can turn it
off quite easily! By all means give it a go. I'd say about the
size and shape of the gnumeric splash. I can probably find a
reasonably high resolution Gretel image for you to mash on.
2- The program opens as a small window. While this should be
perfectly OK with most people, maybe it gives the wrong
impression with other (maybe prejudiced) people.
OK, it's getting late, and this one is quite complex. I'll
respond tomorrow...
4-Finally, who says the program has to load up this fast?
Allin, can you put some extra disk activity for about 6-7
seconds and put up a fancy message like "please wait while
gretl kernel configures the internal function database" :)
How about, in the Windows version, a scroll-by of all the DLLs,
OCXs, COM objects and .NET components we're initializing?
Allin.