On Thu, December 21, 2006 22:33, Andreas Karlsson wrote: our scripting infrastructure is, as of now, not sophisticated enough to support computationally demanding methods. To let them do the tasks I am giving them, it would be to hard for them to write scripts and use other programming Minitab, which I think the gretl GUI can be compared with in usability. For this purpose, script based user function is thus not enough, but it has to be a GUI for these tasks. That's why I have asked for inclusion of some features. Foreword: Allin the merciful and compassionate has already provided a "point and click" interface for generating binomials, which is is CVS right now, together with a few histogram fixes. This said, I do realise that one of gretl's selling points is ease of use, maybe the biggest one. But I also think that if you try to cram too many things in a GUI interface, all you get is information overload and easy things become difficult simply because you have too many items to choose from. I personally don't use MS Word, but people who do tell me that this is exactly what happens to them (which is why, by the way, some MS programs now have this "feature" of just showing you only some menu items --- bizarre if you ask me but, hey, I'm a linux user, so I'm not really bothered). If you want to manage a decent level of complexity, there is no alternative to a text interface. I don't mean to interefere with your style of teaching, but IMHO giving the students the idea that a text interface can be a powerful tool (which, incidentally, prevents carpal tunnel syndrome) is not that bad. And if I haven't convinced you so far, it's ok: as Sven said, write your own function and give it a GUI interface: the manual will tell you all about it. Thank you for your ideas! Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti Dipartimento di Economia Facoltà di Economia "G. Fuà" Ancona Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti Dipartimento di Economia Facoltà di Economia "G. Fuà" Ancona