EViews.com

Hi

It would be nice if one could simultaneous edit program files with colleagues.

With Google docs, or MS Word online, you can simultaneous edit text files. In Eviews, I can open text files. If I could include text files in program files, then I could in practice be simultaneous editing Eviews program files with colleagues through Google docs or MS word online.

How can I make a code so that I
a) make a new program
b) include a text document in the program
c) close the program
d) execute the program
?

Or maybe you have a better way of doing this?
Thomas

if the include statement would also include text files, that would do it. Can you add this functionality? or is there another way to do it?


Thomas

I managed to open a text file and execute the textfile as a program file using

text _t
_t.append(file) .\test2.txt
_t.save .\testsave.prg
exec .\testsave


in google docs i can simulateneously edit this document with others, but for some reason, i cannot open the document in Eviews. I can access my GDrive account, but i get the error message

"unable to open file <Google Drive vonbrasch> :test2.txt",

when executing the command:

open "<Google Drive vonbrasch>:\KVARTS\test2.txt"

opening a workfile through Gdrive works fine (wfopen(2) "<Google Drive vonbrasch>:\KVARTS\kvarts.WF1")

Do you know what is causing this error?
Thomas

There is a problem with opening text files on google drive. We will get it fixed

ok, perfect, thanks
Thomas

Hi Jason,

I still have a problem with Google Docs.

when i run the program:
text _t 'lag en tekstfil
_t.append(file) <vonbrasch>:\KVARTS\test2.txt
_t.save .\testsave.prg 'lagre teksfilen som et program
exec .\testsave 'kjør den nye programfilen


i get the error message:

"Ï»¿GENR is not defined or is an illegal command in "Ï»¿GENR
A_A=0" in TESTSAVE.PRG."

attached is a picture of the error message, a picture of the text file loaded in eviews, and the text file downloaded from google docs.

Do you understand what is causing this error?
Thomas

The test2.txt file appears to contain some unicode characters that does not appear in notepad or after it has been read in by EViews. This explains the strange start of the error message "Ï»¿GENR ..."

You will have to remove these characters from the text file that you normally use.

The attached file does not have the extraneous characters.

Hi

Buy why does the text file include some unicode characters? I have not entered these characters in my Google doc file. I suspect something is going on when eviews reads the file from Google docs. I will try to create another Google doc text file to see if the same problem occurs again.
Thanks for your quick response
Thomas

Hi Jason

I don’t understand it.

If I create the following document in google docs:

‘genr a=3

I can read this in Eviews, and it displays as

‘genr a=3

in a text object.

But, as I notet in my previous post, when loading the text file as a program file it reads the characters:

‘genr a=3

See attached photo.


You say that this means there are some Unicode characters that Eviews do not read. But if Eviews cannot read simple google doc text files, there is not much point in being able to access google docs….? Can you please fix it so that eviews understands the text:

‘genr a=3

? Since Eviews displays the google doc correctly in Eviews as a text object, it must “understand” the Unicode characters, and hopefully it should be easy for you guys to fix this.

I also have a second problem with using google docs. When changing a text file in google docs, and reloading it in Eviews using a program code, Eviews will fetch the old version. It can take several minutes before the new version is downloaded correctly to Eviews. However, if a change a google doc text file, and manually open it from Eviews by clicking file/open/text file, the newly changed text file opens without a problem. Why will manually opening a google doc text file work correctly, while doing it with a program code will not load the updated version? Is this something you can also fix?

Thomas

When saving text files on Google drive, apparently Google adds 'byte order marking' to the beginning of every text file. This tells the reading application the file encoding. We will get this fixed.

We will also look in to editing the text file from within google drive as well.

perfect, thanks!
Thomas

Hi again

and thanks for updating Eviews so quickly.

I still experience some problems when downloading text files from Google Drive.

1) a textfile in Google Drive

‘genr a=3

is read by Eviews as

‘genr a=3

. This is much better than what it was. Now I can just replace

‘

with the apostrophe

'

. But it would be great if you could fix this also. The apostrophe

'

is often used in Eviews programs to comment out stuff.

2) For some reason, when I make changes to a Google Drive document, it still can take some time before the updated version is downloaded into Eviews correctly. I ran a program 08:06, but changes I had made to the text file 2 minutes earlier (08.04) was not updated when downloading into Eviews, see picture: . I am not sure what is causing this. Manually downloading the file from within Eviews yields the same text file as when downloading it within a program.

3) Eviews stops working: When trying out downloading text files from Google Drice to Eviews, Eviews has stopped working five times during a period of about 20 minutes, see picture:

I hope this is also something you can fix. We are now so close to being able to use Google docs as a platform for running Eviews programs.

Thomas

1)The main problem is google docs supports unicode and EViews does not. EViews assumes text files and programs are in ascii. You can fix this specific problem by selecting (in google docs) tools->preferences and then deselecting 'Use smart quotes'. To be more EViews/ASCII compliant, you should also deselect 'Automatic substitution'.

2) We are still working on this one.

3) We will get this fixed as well.

perfect, thanks for your reply. i was not aware that i could change those settings
thomas

when you have fixed those things, could you please also create an option in the Eviews exec command that allows one to execute a text file from google drive as a program file, i.e., that does something similar to




or is there a better way of doing this already?
Thomas