Appendix A. Global Options

938—Appendix A. Global Options

•Keyboard Focus controls where the keyboard cursor is placed when you change views or windows. As the label suggests, when you select Command Window, the keyboard focus will go to the command window following a change of view. This setting is most useful if you primarily use EViews via the command line. Choosing Active Window will cause the focus to go to the active window following a change of view. You will find this setting useful if you wish to use keystrokes to navigate between and to select items in various windows. Note that whatever the default setting, you may always change the keyboard focus by clicking in the command window, or by clicking in the active window.

•Warn On Close instructs EViews to provide a warning message when you close an untitled object. You may choose to set warnings for various object types. By default, EViews warns you that closing an unnamed object without naming it will cause the object to be deleted. Along with the warning, you will be given an opportunity to name the object. If you turn the warning off, closing an untitled window will automatically delete the object.

•Allow Only One Untitled specifies, for each object type, whether to allow multiple untitled objects to be opened at the same time. If only one is allowed, creating a new untitled object will cause any existing untitled object of that type to be deleted automatically. Setting EViews to allow only one untitled object reduces the number of windows that you will see on your desktop.

If you elect to allow only one untitled object, we strongly recommend that you select Warn on Close. With this option set, you will be given the opportunity to name and save an existing untitled object, otherwise the object will simply be deleted.

File Locations

This dialog allows you to set the default working directory, and the locations of the .INI file, database registry and alias map, and the temp directory.

The dialog also reports, but does not allow you to alter, the location of your EViews executable.

Note that the default working directory may also be changed via the File Open and File Save or File Save As dialogs, or by using the cd command.

940—Appendix A. Global Options

tings are discussed in detail in “Frequency Conversion” beginning on page 115.

The default date display controls the format for dates in sample processing, and in workfile and various object views. For daily and weekly data, you can set the default to American (Month/Day/Year) or you may switch to European notation (Day/Month/Year), where the day precedes the month. You may also specify your quarterly or monthly date display to use the Colon delimiter or a Frequency delimiter character based on the workfile frequency (“q” or “m”). The latter has the advantage of displaying dates using an informative delimiter (“1990q1” vs. “1990:1”).

See also “Free-format Conversion Details” on page 149 for related discussion.

Database Registry / Database Storage Defaults

The Database Registry... settings are described in detail in “The Database Registry” on page 275.

You may also control the default behavior of EViews when moving data into and out of databases using the

Database Storage Defaults...

menu item to open the Database Default Storage Options dialog. The dialog controls the behavior of group store and fetch (see “Storing a Group Object” and

“Fetching a Group Object” on page 273), and whether data are stored to databases in single or double precision.

Workfile Storage Defaults

The Workfile Save Options dialog allows you to specify storage precision and compression options for your saved workfiles, and to specify whether or not to create backup workfiles when overwriting existing files on disk.

The Options Menu—941

The Series storage portion of the dialog controls whether series data are stored in saved workfiles in single or double precision. Note that workfiles saved in single precision will be converted to double precision when they are loaded into memory.

In addition, you may elect to save your workfiles in compressed format on disk by checking the Use compression setting. Note that compressed files are not readable by versions of EViews prior to 5.0, and that they do not

save memory when using the workfile, as it is uncompressed when loaded into memory. Compressed workfiles do, however, save disk space.

You should uncheck the Prompt on each Save checkbox to suppress the workfile save dialog on each workfile save.

In addition, you may specify whether EViews should keep backup copies of workfiles when saving over an existing file. If selected, the automatic backup copy will have the same name as the file, but with the first character in the extension changed to “~”.

Estimation Defaults

You can set the global defaults for the maximum number of iterations, convergence criterion, and methods for computing derivatives.

These settings will be used as the default settings in iterative estimation methods for equation, log likelihood, state space, and system objects. Note that previously estimated EViews objects that were estimated with the

previous default settings will be unchanged, unless reestimated. See “Setting Estimation Options” on page 951 for additional details.

When the Display settings option is checked, EViews will produce additional output in the estimation output describing the settings under which estimation was performed.

Graphics Defaults

These options control how a graph appears when it is first created. Most of these options are explained in considerable detail in “Modifying Graphs” beginning on page 416.

942—Appendix A. Global Options

Spreadsheet Defaults

These options control the default spreadsheet view settings of series, group, and table objects. The defaults are set using these option settings when the object is first created.

The left-hand portion of the dialog contains settings for specific objects.

In the upper left-hand corner of the dialog, you may set the display format for Series spreadsheets. You may choose to display the spreadsheet in one or multiple columns, with or without object labels and header information. In addition, you may choose to have edit mode turned on or off by default.

Below this section are the Group spreadsheet options for sample filtering, transposed display, and edit mode.

Frozen tables allows you to modify whether edit mode is on or off by default.

On the right-hand side of the dialog are display settings that apply to all numeric and text spreadsheet displays. You may specify the default Numeric display to be used by new objects. The settings allow you to alter the numeric formatting of cells, the number of digits to be displayed, as well as the characters used as separators and indicators for negative numbers. Similarly, you may choose the default Text justification and Indentation for alphanumeric display.

We emphasize the fact that these display options only apply to newly created series or group objects. If you subsequently alter the defaults, existing objects will continue to use their own settings.

Alpha Truncation

Note that EViews alpha series automatically resize as needed, up to the truncation length.

To modify the alpha series truncation length, select Alpha Truncation... to open the Alpha Truncation Length dialog, and enter the desired length. Subsequent alpha series creation and assignment will use the new truncation length.