Those two short sentences were meant to cancel,
more or less. But here goes.
I didn't think that expanding on (a)
why I haven't missed this or (b) why I
don't think that would be useful to me
was likely to be of much interest.
However, there are two underlying points,
one specific and one general.
1. I wrote some code in response to
Bill Rising's suggestion. I don't
understand why Bill appears to want
StataCorp to provide something which
as far as I can see users can provide for themselves
without hoping and waiting for their decision
in principle to do it and their implementation
in practice. Anyway, I was signalling,
perhaps too obliquely, that if anyone
wants to take the code further, they're
welcome.
2. No innovation to Stata by StataCorp is cost-free.
Every innovation has implications in
terms of test scripts, help files, manual revision,
tech support, etc. and possible downsides
in making Stata just that bit more
complicated and bloating the documentation.
Sometimes a short-term tweak is a good idea
in itself, but doesn't fit in with long-term
ideas about how Stata will change, except that
StataCorp won't tell us that.
In fact, writing the code is sometimes the
least part of it. Also, and more obviously,
everything else gets pushed down the
list of things to do.
This is rather difficult to appreciate unless
somehow you have seen something of how
Stata is developed, e.g. by contributing
an ado which was adopted as part of official
Stata. So an expression of lack of interest
may seem a zero or negative contribution
to debate compared with someone who has had
a bright new idea, but it is a contribution too.
That's doesn't mean of course that everyone
who is not interested in some new idea should
write in to Statalist and say "That doesn't
interest me." The silences can be weighed too.
Nick
[email protected]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Leuven, E.
> Sent: 14 May 2004 15:52
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: st: RE: a ui suggestion
>
>
> On 5/14/04 5:46, Nick Cox wrote
> >I am not sure I would ever want this myself. No matter.
>
> why not?
>
> although i am not sure either that i will use it, it seems to
> be a really non-intrusive ui change...
>
>
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