[Gretl-users] new plot --tweaks option

This is a follow-up to the discussion started by Frederik Schaff at http://lists.wfu.edu/pipermail/gretl-users/2016-March/011701.html Frederik was asking, among other things, if we could generalize the mechanism available for the "gnuplot" command, whereby you can add extra gnuplot commands within a special string enclosed by "{" and "}" -- for example, to customize frequency plots. While I can see the case for this, I was a bit reluctant on the grounds that the "{ ... }" mechanism is very much an ad hoc thing and kind of an "unruly" element within hansl syntax. I think I now have a better alternative, more consistent with modern hansl syntax and capabilities. It's not yet documented, because I want to leave space for discussion and possible improvements, but here's the current status: The commands "gnuplot", "boxplot", "scatters" and "freq" now have an option --tweaks which requires as argument the name of an array of strings. The strings in the array are inserted into the gnuplot command file after the intial "boilerplate" lines but before the "plot" command. Here's an illustration: <hansl> open data4-10 strings S = array(2) S[1] = "set title 'My Preferred Title'" S[2] = "set label 'Delaware' at 0.18,0.25" gnuplot ENROLL CATHOL --tweaks=S --output=display S[2] = "set yrange [0:0.5]" freq ENROLL --silent --tweaks=S --plot=display list X = CATHOL INCOME COLLEGE WHITE S[1] = "set border 3" S[2] = "" scatters ENROLL ; X --tweaks=S --output=display </hansl> If we reckon this is worthwhile it could be generalized to all commands that generate plots without too much difficulty. Note that there's no need for the somewhat "fussy" syntax of wrapping in braces and terminating gnuplot commands with semicolons. Allin