[Gretl-users] Fixed problems with decimal comma and some contributed packages

Hello everybody, as you know, gretl is one of very few scientific programs that support regional-specific settings for the decimal number separator. (It can handle the decimal comma, except if you're scripting yourself with the built-in hansl language, where the decimal point/period is mandatory internally.) Recently we found out that this support caused a bug with some contributed packages, especially when they produce plots. The bug would only bite if you ran gretl with a decimal comma setting. (Note that even if you run gretl with a translated interface, you are not necessarily using the decimal comma, because that also depends on the user setting "use locale-specific decimal separator". For example, I typically run gretl in German, but not with the decimal comma.) We identified the following six affected packages and then asked the respective authors to fix them with respect to this subtle bug: * heatmap.gfn -- heatmap plots * kddensity.gfn -- kernel estimation of bivariate densities * gnuplot_piechart.gfn -- A simple 2D pie chart * yahoo_get.gfn -- Downloader of daily financial data from Yahoo * CUB.zip -- Uniform-Binomial mixture model for ordinal data * MDS.gfn -- Multidimensional Scaling These packages have now been updated and fixed. So if in the past they failed when you tried them, perhaps you should try again with the new versions! Also, let me stress again that bug reports are very important. Of course the individual package authors are responsible for their packages, but a subtle bug like this one really cannot be blamed on anybody. So don't hesitate to report failures of contributed function packages here on the list. cheers Sven