Re: [Gretl-users] question about gretl help/manual

On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Cristian Rigamonti wrote: Sorry Cri, I don't understand what you mean here, or possibly I wasn't quite clear. My idea was that there should be very little overlap between the two documents. Technical documentation should be written in xml, since it will be typically accessed through some kind of help system: the majority of our users run gretl under Windows, I suppose (at least, all my students do), so ease of export to chm is top priority. Chapter 14 of the current manual is a perfect example. It's nice to be able to read a printout, but I guess its contents are read 99% of the times on screen. The more textbook-like document I have in mind can't be written in anything but LaTeX. An example of what I'd like to see here is what currently is chapter 12 (the 2 pages on the Johansen test). This doesn't need to be part of the help system. (Although, I should add, many people find Eviews' help system quite useful. Basically, the Eviews manual is a hardcopy of the help files. These contain formulas, references and everything you expect to find in an econometrics textbook.) And translation from LaTeX to html is very solid technology anyway, in case you need that. Moreover, the split would help translations, IMO. Actually, I'd assign higher priority to translation of the GUI elements and the technical documentation. If "part 2" doesn't get translated, well, I can live with that. If other people find it difficult to replicate the splendid job you're doing with Italian because of time constraints, they can settle for the essentials. Riccardo `Jack' Lucchetti Dipartimento di Economia Università Politecnica delle Marche jack(a)dea.unian.it http://www.econ.univpm.it/lucchetti