[Gretl-devel] gretl 1.8.5?

[Allin Cottrell]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2009, Talha Yalta wrote:

> I have a few bug reports and suggestions before the 1.8.5 myself:
>
> 1)- Gretl crashes choosing the "XY Scatter Plot" option from the right
> click menu.

As I mentioned, this is now fixed.

> 2)- The little "^" signs for sorting the variables based on ID# etc
> seem a little strange. I don't know if it is just me but I see three
> "^" signs for the three columns visable at all times. I would normally
> expect to see just one of them, since there is only one sort criteria.

What version of GTK do you have on your system?  I see only one
"sort arrow" at any given time, depending on the column selected,
and no arrows if you return the sorting to its "base state"
(arranged by ID number).

> 3) I agree that there are enough bug fixes and feature improvements
> for a new release but I feel that some of them still need some
> finishing touches. I think it would be really nice to relase gretl
> 1.8.5 after perfecting the new GUI features with a few minor additions
> such as:
>    a)- Adding a "restore model sample" option in the Edit menu for the
> model window so that the user does not have to close and reopen model
> windows just to get the newly implemented and convenient dialog box
> for restoring the sample option.

Possibly.

>    b)- I still don't see why saving fitted values, residuals and
> squared residuals need to be disabled while the various tests can be
> very neatly done without reverting to the model sample.

That's because you haven't looked at the code ;-).  Or in other
words, you haven't had to think through the full implications of
adding new variables in the case where we're looking at two
different sub-sampled datasets: the one the model was estimated
on, and the one currently in force.  (It's not so difficult if the
full dataset is currently in force and only the model's dataset
was sub-sampled, but even that is tricky to get right.)

>    c)- I think it would be complementary to the refinements for the
> GUI "model table" to improve the LaTeX output of the "summary
> statisitcs" table as well. In particular, it would be very nice to be
> able to set the number of significant digits and also disable some
> statistics in favor of a one-part table.

No doubt, but I'm not going to make a 1.8.5 release conditional on
that.

> 4)- I second Sven's request to implement the gnuplot "fit"
> options for time-series plots.

If you produce a single time-series plot in the GUI you now get
the option of adding a linear, quadratic or loess fit against
time, with dates appearing on the x-axis.  But this needs more
testing.

> In fact here is a suggestion: Since we now have a separate
> "lines" tab, how about removing fitted line option from the main
> tab and instead add a small icon next to the formula line for
> specifying a new line? This new icon should give a drop down
> list of the various available fitted line options including a
> few more such a heteroscedasticity corrected ols fitted line.
> This way we can easily create graphs with more than one fitted
> line. I think this would be powerful.

Maybe later -- though it sounds a bit over-complicated to me --
but not for 1.8.5.

Allin