Re: [Gretl-users] Variable name
On Thu, 19 Jan 2006, jack wrote:
On Thu, 19 Jan 2006, john w wrote:
> Is it possible to expand, in one of the next versions, the variable names
> from 8 to 16 characters?
I agree. In fact, I'd make it 32 characters. I can't see any
technical impediment, except going through the code to
double-check everything will be tedious and error-prone.
Allin, your opinion? If you agree, I can start working on this in
the next days.
I think this is basically a good idea (though I'd tend to go for 16
characters, not 32, for regular variable names). The main problem
is with the various output-printing functions. For both console
output and the output that goes to gui windows, everything is in a
fixed format. Many of the output functions would have to be
redesigned to avoid stuff breaking over lines given a wider variable
name field.
One possible redesign that would save width on numeric output fields
would be to print all numbers such as coefficients and standard
errors in a fixed width, as opposed to gretl's current practice of
using decimal-aligned numbers printed to a given number of
significant figures, using scientific notation only when absolutely
needed. But I think gretl's current numeric output is nice and easy
to read -- you can see the relative magnitude of coefficients at a
glance.
That said, I don't claim that gretl's current regression output is
perfect and I'm certainly willing to consider proposals for
redesign, within an 80-column format.
Allin Cottrell