#213 Missing syntax file for hansl

[Jay]

The gretl.lang syntax file is missing after installation on Debian stretch, so there is no highlighting in the script editor. It should be in /usr/share/gtksourceview-2.0/language-specs/. Also I couldn't find this file (perhaps not surprisingly) in the source code here or in the dowloaded source folder. There is one at https://sourceforge.net/p/gretl/git/ci/3c456b7e54615cb79ba013bb33768f44cc7d0fbb/tree/gui2/gretl.lang but it has some keywords missing.

[Sven S.]

Am 06.09.2017 um 11:30 schrieb Jay :

[bugs:#213] Missing syntax file for hansl

The gretl.lang syntax file is missing after installation on Debian stretch, so there is no highlighting in the script editor. It should be in /usr/share/gtksourceview-2.0/language-specs/. Also I couldn't find this file (perhaps not surprisingly) in the source code here or in the dowloaded source folder.

Hi, thanks for the report. However, I believe it is a generated file, so
it wouldn't be in the source distribution.
Are you using the default gretl package for stretch? (Which would be
version 2016d I think.) It is clear that syntax highlighting in recent
gretl versions is not broken, so this would not be a proper gretl bug.

In principle it could be a bug in the distributed Debian package, in
which case you would have to file a report with Debian. But as far as I
remember there's also the issue that the gtksourceview versions have to
match. I think there could be a mismatch between v-2 and v-3 libraries
of gtksourceview.
See this thread here:
http://lists.wfu.edu/pipermail/gretl-users/2014-March/009716.html

I am going to close this soon if no further evidence comes up that it
really is a bug. But don't let that stop you from continuing the
discussion to solve the actual problem you're having.

cheers,
sven

[Jay]

Hi Sven, yeah it seems like a Debian bug then. My immediate problem is that I don't have a complete syntax file. I did actually try to compile the source code but it failed so I can't generate the file. Never mind, I guess I can manually add the missing keywords to the gretl.lang I linked to in my post.

[Allin Cottrell]

There's something about the Debian packaging of gretl that makes it vulnerable to a mess-up over the location of gretl.lang. However, it may be that part of the blame lies on our side. I've recently made some changes in gretl git that should eliminate this problem in future. In the meantime I've placed the gretl.lang from the most recent release, 2017c,
at http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/pub/gretl/gretl-2107c.lang ; if you put this into the appropriate gtksourceview language-specs directory as gretl.lang it should give you what was intended for the release.

[Sven S.]

Am 06.09.2017 um 22:57 schrieb Allin Cottrell:

future. In the meantime I've placed the gretl.lang from the most
recent release, 2017c, at
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/pub/gretl/gretl-2107c.lang ;
There is a typo in the filename (2107 instead of 2017), but the link
works. Not sure if it's worth correcting.

thanks,
sven

[Allin Cottrell]

On Fri, 8 Sep 2017, Sven S. wrote:

Am 06.09.2017 um 22:57 schrieb Allin Cottrell:

future. In the meantime I've placed the gretl.lang from the most
recent release, 2017c, at
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/pub/gretl/gretl-2107c.lang ;
There is a typo in the filename (2107 instead of 2017), but the link
works. Not sure if it's worth correcting.

Oops, that's now corrected:
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/pub/gretl/gretl-2017c.lang

[Jay]

Thanks very much, Allin. By the way, gretl is awesome. I was looking for data analysis software and after trying R and Octave I stumbled upon gretl. I love the combination of gui, editor and console, and am very impressed with hansl which is very easy to learn and surprisingly fast.

Update: I renamed the file you linked to as "gretl.lang" and put it in /usr/share/gtksourceview-2.0/language-specs/, overwriting the file I got from https://sourceforge.net/p/gretl/git/ci/3c456b7e54615cb79ba013bb33768f44cc7d0fbb/tree/gui2/gretl.lang but now there is no syntax highlighting at all. Looking at the files I see that the format and syntax is different so is the problem perhaps that the new file is only compatible with gtk3 (the gretl I have is gtk2)? Any suggestions? Sorry to be a pain.

[Sven S.]

Am 07.09.2017 um 09:50 schrieb Jay :

Thanks very much, Allin. By the way, gretl is awesome. I was looking
for data analysis software and after trying R and Octave I stumbled
upon gretl. I love the combination of gui, editor and console, and am
very impressed with hansl which is very easy to learn and
surprisingly fast.

It's interesting to hear that you like especially the combination,
because sometimes there's a split between GUI fans and the experienced
programmers.
Spread the word, also about the speed!

cheers,
sven

[Riccardo "Jack" Lucchetti]

Spread the word, also about the speed!

Attached you'll find a little script that I sometimes use to impress my
friends.

---

Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)

Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)

r.lucchetti@univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti

---

[Sven S.]

Interesting, but this is getting off-topic for this bug tracker thread. Let's continue the discussion about documenting gretl's speed on the devel mailing list.
Going to close this bug now.

[Jay]

Regarding the syntax highlighting problem, I removed the Debian package and successfully compiled the latest version with gtk3 so it's all good now. The build instructions in the user guide are very clear, which makes a nice change. :-).