7:45 a.m.
Thanks very much for your useful comments. I have to agree with all of
your points and I am absolutely grateful for making the GUI selector
remember the last directory. The old behavior was so annoying for me
that I think my life expectancy has increased a bit with this :-)
I have just a few quick comments:
1)- You haven't commented on my points 2 and 7. Does this mean you
don't disagree with them? \(^_^)/
2)- Remebering the last directory is so great and natural that I don't
think anybody would disagree if it was the standard behavior instead
of an option. If the user prefers working in the working directory the
program remembers that too, no? Plus, the working directory can be
changed at any time.
3)- I think the file menu could be improved (become simpler and more
standard) if you could remove the import data sub-menu and add this
functionality to the open user file dialog box as a drop-down "file
format" option. Similarly, the "Export data" sub-menu would be an item
where the file format choice is done within the GUI selector as most
other programs do.
4)- I still think that there must be a better way to do the missing
value function. How about gretl doing the fixing data aspect of it at
the time of opening the data?
5)- I would like to point out that I do support (with Berend) having a
"Window" menu even if it will be the 10th menu. The only down side I
can think of is that this may require the main window getting a bit
wider by default in some translations.
Cheers
Talha
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 11:27 PM, Allin Cottrell <cottrell(a)wfu.edu> wrote:
First of all, Like Sven I won't be able to do much in this area in
the next couple of weeks, but I'll be interested to hear more
reactions to recent changes and proposals. Meanwhile I'll respond
to some of Talha's points.
On Thu, 3 Dec 2009, Talha Yalta wrote:
> 1)- How about renaming all the "... data" items (open data, append
> data, save data, etc.) items in the file menu simply open, append,
> save, save as, etc. (and "Clear data set" will be renamed close)? This
> would be an improvement because we already have a "data" menu and
> secondly this way is consistent with the naming scheme of other
> programs (openoffice, gnumeric, etc.).
Gretl is very different from those other programs. We have to
handle various disparate types of files, including but not limited
to data files. I can't see any advantage in removing the
information that the files referenced in the top half of the File
menu are data files. And "Clear data" is much more descriptive
than "Close".
> 3)- How about consolidating the "Display values" and the "Edit
values"
> items in the Data menu into one "Edit values" item which will give the
> spreadsheet for the whole data set as in the "Data set" item in the
> icon view?
Displaying and editing data are different operations with
different associated options. Non-starter. Plus with a big
dataset you almost certainly don't want to open the whole thing at
once in the data editor -- that's a very resource-intensive
operation.
> 4)- Modern programs do not have a "Working directory" setting because
> the various open and save dialog boxes remember the last directory. I
> for one find it rather annoying that gretl does not do this. If
> implemented, I think Sven would appreciate this feature as well.
Modern, schmodern. Gretl requires and supports more sophisticated
directory/path handling than "pure GUI" programs. Files can be
opened and saved via script and console as well as via GUI
dialogs. Experts will often start gretl from the command prompt,
not via an icon, and we want proper reversion to the current
working directory (unless we don't, in which case we can turn it
off).
However, I have made one modification here. In the Working
directory dialog there's now one more binary choice: to have the
GUI file selector remember and revisit the directory last used for
an Open/Save operation, or always to start in the selected working
directory. Note that this affects the GUI selector only; and it
doesn't persist across sessions. I mean, the preference persists,
but the name of the "last visited folder" does not.
> 5)- What is the relationship between the two "Set missing value
> code" items in the Data and Variable menus?
Try clicking the little button with "Help" written on it ;-)
This is about fixing data that has been read in from some third
party source. One chooses a value -- -1, 999, whatever -- and
says that either for a particular variable, or for all variables,
that value should be converted to gretl's internal NA.
> What will happen if one sets a NA code for a single variable and
> then chooses something else from the data menu?
Choose -1 for a particular variable; all -1s become NAs.
Choose 999 for the dataset: all 999s become NAs. No problem.
> 6)- RNG seed is not a tool.
If it's not a tool (I still say it is), then a tool is the thing
it most resembles. It is certainly not a "preference". I don't
"prefer" 12067543, I choose to set it on a particular occasion.
Allin.
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