On Sun, 16 Jul 2006, Talha Yalta wrote:
I have a few suggestions that I think has the potential to
improve gretl significantly. But, first of all, as a newcomer,
I hope you don't consider my continously suggesting things in
a negative way.
No, you're very welcome to make suggestions. We'll even
implement some of them! (Current CVS has some further
small modifications to the handling of p-values in the light of
your tests.)
1- My first and most important suggeston is to make the gretl
main window the icon view. The list of variables will be
removed and turned into an icon itself.
I've been meaning to write a full response to your comments on
the overall gui design (you have thought about this carefully
and certainly deserve a response), but I haven't had time yet.
At present I only have time for a brief response:
1) Personally, I disagree quite strongly: I find the variable
listing window very useful and the icon view useful only for
specialized, low-frequency tasks (composing and viewing the
"model table" or "graph page").
2) The variable listing window is quite dense in shortcuts and
tricks which are probably not obvious at first but which make an
"expert" user quite productive. I'll try to write something up
on this before long.
3) Gretl is now enough of a community project that you shouldn't
take my negative on point 1 as "end of story". It _is_ end of
story for the 1.6.0 release -- there will be no gui redesign
beyond a more logical arrangement of menu items -- but
thereafter we can reopen this question again.
2- My second suggestion is: the "file" menu can be modified
so
that the first items are "new session" "open session", "save
session", "save session as" "close session" etc. This is
because the main mode of working is through "sessions".
I don't really get "new session". You've entered a new session
simply by starting the program. Now you most likely want to
open a data file -- or a script, or perhaps a saved session.
I'd be happy to discuss this sort of thing after 1.6.0, but not
right now, because what you have in mind is, IMO, more then a
menu tidy-up, as in:
a selection diaog can provide the options to create "null
data" or open or import various existing data files.
3- I think splash screens are important... I am happy to try a
few desings so that you can select the one that you like the
most. I can get started when I have the high resolution Gretel
image. By the way where does this image come from? Can we get
into trouble for using it? You guys are positive that should
be the theme in the splash screen?
I got the Gretel image off the web in 2000. Via Google images
I've found the same jpeg at
http://legends.duelingmodems.com/fairy/index.html
There's no copyright info there, and this seems to be a
relatively new site, probably not where I got it from
originally. Apparently it's not the work of any of the
better-known Grimm illustrators. Another site is using an
edited version of the same file. I think we're OK.
I think Gretel should be in the design somewhere, but it needn't
be centred on her.
Finally I would like to share the good news that the review of
the upcoming gretl 1.6.0 and its numerical accuracy that I
coauthored with my wife is accepted to JAE for publication in
the software section.
Excellent!
Allin.