March 2014:
Not ha-ha funny. I'm looking at financial deregulation and what happened to debt in the 1980s and 1990s. I put Federal debt and non-Federal debt on a graph. Then I figured I'd put a vertical line at each date a regulation changed. (I only had four dates; no big deal.) I used FRED's "user-defined line" option to add these verticals.
Then I wanted to add two more verticals, to identify the start and end of the Savings & Loan crisis. So I told FRED to add a fifth user-defined line (my 7th line overall) but it came up as LINE 6 again, with the location-values I had just entered for LINE 6. I said that's not right, and tried again. Same thing. LINE 6 came up again.
Okay, I said, I guess we're limited to four user-defined lines. (Why that should be, I don't know.) But then I looked at the FORMAT area, where I can change line colors and thicknesses and stuff. LINE 6 is listed THREE TIMES!
See for yourself:
(Click the image to see it bigger.)
If you change the color for ANY of the LINE 6 entries, the first LINE 6 entry always indicates the new color, and the line on the graph changes to match the setting.
If you change the line width for any of the LINE 6 entries, your new width-value stays where you put it. But the first LINE 6 entry is the only one that actually changes the line width.
I didn't try changing the line style.
This was a pretty entertaining error. I was trying to figure out why the line changes when you change any of the LINE 6 color controls, but the line width only changes when you change the first LINE 6 width control. They don't use the same code, I'm thinking.
Anyhow, a good solution to this problem would include increasing the maximum number of user-defined lines that can be added to a graph. And I still don't know why, in order to create a user-defined line, I have to click Create user-defined line? and then after the screen changes, click Create user-defined line? again, and then after the screen changes again, click Create line.
But I'm sure there is a good reason for it.
