[Gretl-users] bug-hunting and gretl 1.9.6

Sorry, this is a bit long but I hope you'll bear with me. First, I'd like to second a comment made by Jack Lucchetti on the gretl-devel list, namely that the idea of announcing a pre-release bug-hunting period has proved its worth very nicely. Thanks to Ignacio Diaz-Emparanza for proposing this, and thanks to all who have submitted reports. Hopefully, gretl 1.9.6 will be a "keeper". Second, in the process of responding to bug reports I've modified a few translatable strings, so I propose to wait a few more days before releasing to give translators the opportunity to catch up. I'm now expecting to release gretl 1.9.6 by the end of this week. Third, in the spirit of the bug-hunting period I have tried to restrain myself and not add new functionality that might pack new bugs. However, there are a few new things in CVS that may be worth mentioning. 1) Adding an importer for new-style Excel files (Office Open XML, *.xlsx) was less difficult than I feared, so this will be in 1.9.6. 2) I have a new econometrician colleague who has been learning gretl fast, and in writing a simulation script he noted some room for improvement in our random number generation functions. In response I have a couple of changes: (a) Added a new function mrandgen() which provides the same functionality as randgen(), but with matrix output. (b) Added a new distribution option, 'i' to randgen and mrandgen: this gives discrete (integer) uniform output over a specified closed interval. And there's also a new function randint() which does the same but with scalar output. It's possible to write your own function to generate random integers on the basis of gretl's continuous uniform output, but it's not trivial to get that right; it's also rather roundabout, since the underlying RNG used by gretl offers integer output natively. The new discrete random functions give direct access to the integer RNG. Fourth, I have just recently tried to improve the behavior of the GUI script editor in respect of the Tab and Enter keys. The idea is that "smart tab" at the start of a line should produce the correct indent, and Enter should correct the indent of the line that's being terminated, if need be. Up till now this has worked up to a point but has not been fully reliable, and I think it should now be better. Please let me know if you see any anomalies. Allin Cottrell