[Gretl-users] GRETL Feature Suggestion

Hi: I am a Ph.D. candidate at Fordham University in NY and I am using Gretl extensively for a few months now. I am a big fan of linux and open source software and I must say I am very impressed with Gretl. I would like to thank all the contributors for bringing us this elegant and very high quality software which is a pure joy to use. I would also like to suggest a few new features: I usually work with PSID data that contains more than 200 columns and 30000 rows and I need to create a number of dummies and bring the sample to a more manageble size (say 4000 observations). For this task, I really wanted to use openoffice calc and gnumeric but unfortunately I realized that MS excel is much more efficient working with large files since opensource alternatives become very sluggish even with data containing about 10000 observations. Now, I know that Gretl has a built in spreadsheet and it looks like it is quite efficient. So I think it would be a great idea to improve this feature a little bit: (1)- First of all, when I try to open my data in spreadsheet mode I get an error message saying that I cannot open spreadsheet that has more than 1600 rows. This doesn't make sense to me. We are allowed to use very large data sets, why cannot have this feature cripled? (2)- Related with (1), is there a limit in the number of columns in Gretl's spreadsheet? We know that excel, openoffiice and gnumeric have a limit of 255 columns. This may be more than enough for everyday tasks but not always for research. Of course one can use other specialized software such as dbase but it would be more efficient to be able to use the one already available in Gretl especially since it doesn't look like a memory hog like the others. (3)-Of course we need the ability to do some basic mathematical and logical operations within cells so that we can easily define new data columns. I know we can use the console or the data menu to add new variables such as logs, dummies and lags based on existing variables but this is not enough. Consider a simple command that can be used in other spreadsheets: "=IF(AND(A1=1,B1=1),LOG(C1),"na")" This command creates a new variable based on 3 existing variables very easily and efficiently. I am not sure how I can achieve this in Gretl but if it requires writing a program or a loop, this is counter intuitive. (4)- And as always new features have to be implemented very efficiently using very optimized routines so that Gretl doesn't become a memory hog like many other commercial (and sometimes open source) programs. With all this functionality fit into such a small package, Gretl already speaks for how open source software are usually much better and efficient than commercial alternatives. If new features are added in this fashion it is easy to predict that soon we will have a program that has all the functionalty of expensive software and in a much smaller package, which represents a much higher level of quality and elegance. This would be very welcome within the economics profession, since we are becoming more and more dependent on specialized software to carry out our research. Sincerely, A. Talha YALTA -- Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. - Mark Twain --