Re: [Gretl-users] progress indicator for time-consuming scripts

This works as expected now, Allin. So far at least, I haven't been able to provoke a crash. Pushing the stop button generates a "Execution aborted by request" message. FYI, I discovered this while trying to make sense of what I thought was extremely weird behavior by Gretl. After starting a time-consuming script, it looked to me like nothing was happening (the script output window didn't appear). I'd try starting it again (both from the gui and ctrl-r), and would get errors that didn't make any sense to me. For example, something like "parse error" for the '/*' sequence at the beginning of a comment block (with matching '*/'), or "missing endif" at locations where the 'endif' was in fact there. Eventually I waited long enough for the script to finish, at which point I realized that it'd been running in the background just fine. I guess the errors were a consequence of trying to run 2 copies of the script at the same time. Many thanks as always! PS -----Original Message----- From: gretl-users-bounces(a)lists.wfu.edu [mailto:gretl-users-bounces@lists.wfu.edu] On Behalf Of Allin Cottrell Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2014 8:55 PM To: Gretl users Subject: [Gretl-users] progress indicator for time-consuming scripts This is in response to Peter Summers' observation in http://lists.wfu.edu/pipermail/gretl-users/2014-December/010481.html It's a long story but I'll try to be brief. Prior to gretl 1.9.91 we had a mechanism that appeared in the menubar of a script editor window to indicate progress when a script took appreciable time to complete: a "spinner" plus a "stop" button that could be used to halt execution of the script. (At that time the output window didn't appear until execution of the script was finished.) More recently, I figured it was preferable to open a script output window right away, and show the spinner + stop-button in that window. In this way, we could arrange for partial output to appear as it was produced, giving a more convincing impression that progress was being made (see the newish "flush" command). That worked up to a point, but after Peter's comment I realized that the policy "open an output window right away and show a spinner and stop-button there" was not always engaged; it depended, in a way that I hadn't intended, on certain user choices. I think this is now fixed in CVS and snapshots. Testing would be welcome. If you run a time-consuming script in the GUI you should see the output window "come to the front" with spinner and stopper. (But if the script completes quickly you probably won't notice this.) This is quite tricky to code, and I'd be particularly interested if anyone is able to provoke a crash (e.g. by pressing the stop button). Allin Cottrell _______________________________________________ Gretl-users mailing list Gretl-users(a)lists.wfu.edu http://lists.wfu.edu/mailman/listinfo/gretl-users