PSPP NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
Copyright (C) 1996-2000, 2008-2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021,
2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end for copying conditions.
Please send PSPP bug reports to bug-gnu-pspp@gnu.org.
Changes from 1.6.1 to 1.6.2:
* Bug fixes.
Changes from 1.6.0 to 1.6.1:
* The SET command now supports LEADZERO for controlling output of a
leading zero in F, COMMA, and DOT format.
* Bug fixes and translation updates.
Changes from 1.4.1 to 1.6.0:
* In the Kruskal-Wallis test, a misleading result could occur
if the lower bound specified by the user was in fact higher
than the upper bound specified. This has been fixed.
* The DEFINE, MATRIX, MCONVERT, and MATRIX DATA commands are now
implemented.
* An error in the displayed signficance of oneway anova
contrasts tests has been corrected.
* Added Drag-N-Drop in output view.
* The Explore GUI dialog supports the "Plots" subdialog. Boxplots, Q-Q Plots
and Spreadlevel plots are now also available via the GUI.
* The graphical user interface for importing spreadsheets has been improved.
The new interface provides the user with a preview of the data to be imported
and interactive methods to select the desired ranges.
* The user manual, in its Info and HTML versions, now includes
graphical output examples and screenshots.
* New command SHOW SYSTEM to easily print system information useful
in bug reports.
* Build changes:
- Perl is no longer required to build.
- Build now requires Python 3.4 or later. (Building PSPP 1.4.0
also required Python, but it wasn't properly documented at the
time.)
- The Cairo and Pango libraries are now required.
- gettext 0.20 or later is now required.
- gtksourceview 4.x is now supported (3.x also remains supported).
* Output improvements:
- New drivers for output to TeX source files and to PNG files.
- Table output styles may now be set with the new option
--table-look and the new SET TLOOK command.
- New driver option "trim" to remove empty space from PDF,
PostScript, SVG, and PNG output files.
- The PDF output driver now adds an outline to allow PDF viewers to display
as a "table of contents" for the file.
- The HTML output driver has a new option "bare".
* New features in pspp-output:
- New --table-look and --nth-commands options.
- New get-table-look and convert-table-look commands.
Changes from 1.4.0 to 1.4.1:
* Bug fixes.
* Translation updates.
* HTML output is now HTML5 instead of HTML4.0 Transitional.
* The HOST command has been reimplemented. It now supports TIMELIMIT.
Changes from 1.2.0 to 1.4.0:
* The file pspp-mode.el (the pspp-mode for Emacs) is no longer distributed
with PSPP. Instead, it can be installed directly in emacs and is available
from https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/pspp-mode.html
* The Find dialog box, when searching for numeric values, will match only
to the precision of the variable's print format. This avoids behaviour
which is surprising to some users.
* PSPP now supports the SPSS viewer (.spv) format that SPSS 16 and later
use to save the contents of its output editor:
- PSPP and PSPPIRE can write output to .spv files.
- The new utility pspp-output can convert .spv files to other formats.
- The pspp-convert utility can now decrypt encrypted .spv files. The
encrypted viewer file format is unacceptably insecure, so to
discourage its use PSPP and PSPPIRE do not directly read or write
this format.
* A bug where the Data|Select Cases|Random Sample menu would generate
invalid syntax has been fixed.
* FREQUENCIES will emit a warning if one or more weight values are missing.
* Plain text output is no longer divided into pages, since it is now
rarely printed on paper.
* pspp-convert improvements:
- New "-a", "-l", "--password-list" options to search for an
encrypted file's password.
- New "--keep" and "--drop" options to output only selected variables.
- New "--recode", "--no-var-name", "--labels", "--print-formats",
"--decimal", "--delimiter", and "--qualifier" options to control
CSV output.
* Improvements to SAVE DATA COLLECTION support for MDD files.
* Bug fix for CVE-2018-20230.
* The /RENAME subcommand in SAVE TRANSLATE et al. has been extended
to support the syntax also accepted by other software.
* The EXAMINE command will now perform the Shapiro-Wilk test when
one or more plots are requested.
* The REGRESSION command now supports the /STATISTICS=TOL option which
outputs tolerance and variance inflation factor metrics for the data.
* The QUICK CLUSTER command now supports the /SAVE option which can
be used to save the cases' cluster membership and/or their distance
from the cluster centre to the active file.
* The MEANS command has been re-implemented.
* The GUI now has a sub-dialog for post-hoc tests of the oneway
anova test.
* Gtk+3.22.0 or later must now be used when building.
* GRAPH: Categorical barcharts displaying percentages now show the
sub-category as a percentage of the primary category instead of the
total.
* The Syntax Window now has a Find function to perform simple text
searching.
* AUTORECODE:
- The PRINT subcommand is now implemented.
- Many bug fixes.
Changes from 1.0.1 to 1.2.0:
* New experimental command SAVE DATA COLLECTION to save MDD files.
* MTIME and YMDHMS variable formats now supported.
* Build changes:
- zlib is now a required dependency. (Previously it was optional.)
- Gtk+3.18.0 or later must now be used when building.
- The code implementing the sheet rendering has been removed. Instead we
use a third party library: spread-sheet-widget.
* The "NOMISSING" keyword when generating syntax for piecharts in the
frequencies command was omitted. This has been corrected.
Changes from 1.0.0 to 1.0.1:
* Bug fixes, including fixes for CVE-2017-12958, CVE-2017-12959,
CVE-2017-12960, and CVE-2017-12961.
Changes from 0.11.0 to 1.0.0:
* Translation updates.
Changes from 0.10.2 to 0.11.0:
* The REGRESSION command now has a /ORIGIN subcommand to perform
regression through the origin.
* The FACTOR command can now analyse matrix files prepared with MATRIX DATA.
* The FACTOR command can now print the anti-image matrices.
* The MATRIX DATA command has been added.
* Some inappropriate properties in selection dialogs have been corrected.
* A bug which could cause the HTML driver to go into a tight loop
has been fixed.
* An error in the FREQUENCIES procedure, where the word "Mean" was
printed when "Variance" was appropriate has been fixed.
* The ncurses library is no longer required or used.
* A bug where the Mann-Whitney test would give misleading results
if run on multiple variables and MISSING=ANALAYSIS was specified
has been fixed.
* Gtk+3.14.5 or later must now be used when building.
* Graphical user interface changes:
** There is a new menu: Edit|Options
** The Non Parametric Statistics Menu has a new item: "K Independent Samples".
** Dialog boxes can now be canceled using the <Escape> key.
* The AUTORECODE command now accepts an optional / before INTO.
* The short form of the VECTOR command can now create string variables.
* Bug fixes, including fixes for CVE-2017-10791 and CVE-2017-10792.
Changes from 0.10.1 to 0.10.2:
* CROSSTABS implements a new COUNT subcommand to round case or cell
weights.
* Help will be opened as HTML in default browser if yelp
is not available.
* When plotting scatterplots with only one dataset (the simple case)
the colour used for the dataset is now black. The previous default
from the Tango palette was too faint to see easily.
* The varible info dialog could previously only paste a single variable.
Now it can paste multiple variables.
* Bug fixes, including the following:
- T-test with independent samples GUI crashed with string
type variable as group variable.
- The variable info dialog showed the previous selected variable
superimposed with the currently selected one.
- The GLM command did not properly deal with missing values. This
has been fixed.
Changes from 0.10.0 to 0.10.1:
* Bug fixes, including the following:
- A bug where certain dialog boxes could not be properly populated
has been fixed.
- Various commands have been hardened against errors when called
with invalid syntax.
* Translation updates. Thanks to our translators!
Changes from 0.8.5 to 0.10.0:
* The QUICK CLUSTER command has a /PRINT subcommand which shows
the initial cluster centres and the final cluster membership of
each case. The clustering algorithm has also been updated, so
as to produce better separated clusters.
* A Russian localisation has been contributed.
* The GRAPH command now has a /BAR subcommand to draw barcharts.
* If the DECIMAL character is set to COMMA then the ',' character
will not be treated as a separator by DATA LIST.
* The graphical user interface (psppire) has been changed as follows:
- It now uses Gtk+ version 3 instead of version 2. Accordingly, it has a
somewhat different look and feel.
- There is now a Graphs menu to access the GRAPH command.
- The status of dialog box widgets are now preserved between calls
to the same dialog box for the same dataset.
- The dialog box for the Logistic Regression command will now
infer that string variables or any varible with a "measure"
of Nominal or Ordinal are to be treated as categorical variables
and will generate syntax accordingly.
* The pspp-convert utility can now decrypt encrypted syntax files.
The encrypted syntax file format is unacceptably insecure, so to
discourage its use PSPP and PSPPIRE do not directly read or write
this format.
* New commands:
- SORT VARIABLES.
* The following functions for transformation expressions are new:
- REPLACE, for search-and-replace of one string with another.
- STRUNC, to truncate a string and trim trailing spaces.
- MEDIAN, to compute the median of its arguments.
- The TRUNC function in expressions now supports additional arguments
for truncating to values other than integers and to indicate a level
of rounding fuzz. The default rounding fuzz may now be controlled
and displayed with SET FUZZBITS and SHOW FUZZBITS, respectively.
* Bug fixes, including the following notable ones:
- The correlation coefficient in the paired samples t-test
procedure is now correctly calculated when presented with
weighted data.
- The ESCAPE subcommand has been removed from GET DATA /TYPE=TXT.
For compatibility, the behavior that ESCAPE enabled is now the
default and only supported behavior.
- Rendering of the variable and data sheets in right-to-left locales
now works properly.
- The Mann-Whitney test, when run on a dataset containing values
of the group variable, other than those defining the test groups,
would incorrectly calculate the ranks. This has been corrected.
* The IMPORTCASES subcommand on GET DATA is now ignored, for
compatibility.
Changes from 0.8.4 to 0.8.5:
* The FREQUENCIES and CROSSTABS commands can now generate barcharts.
* The FACTOR command can now perform PROMAX rotations.
* SPSS/PC+ system files are now supported on GET and other commands
that read SPSS system files. The pspp-convert program can now read
SPSS/PC+ system files. Writing the obsolete SPSS/PC+ system file
format is not supported.
* SYSFILE INFO can now read SPSS/PC+ system files and SPSS portable
files.
* FREQUENCIES: A bug was fixed where an assertion failure occurred
when an empty dataset was presented.
* The GRAPH command is now available. Initially it supports
scatterplots and histograms.
* The RND operator in expressions now supports additional operands
for rounding to values other than integers and to indicate a level
of rounding fuzz. The default rounding fuzz may now be controlled
and displayed with SET FUZZBITS and SHOW FUZZBITS, respectively.
Changes from 0.8.3 to 0.8.4:
* Formatting of SYSFILE INFO output was made easier to read.
* Bug fixes, including the following notable ones:
- FREQUENCIES works properly for string variables. (This bug was
introduced in 0.8.2.)
- CROSSTABS now correctly computes all of the measures that it
offers. Some measures have been removed because they were not
computed correctly.
- The NPAR TESTS calculation of significance for the RUNS
subcommand has been corrected.
- Planned comparisons in ONEWAY ANOVA now correctly handle negative
T-values.
- The COUNT command now correctly treats missing values as
documented.
- Conformance fixes to Open Document output format.
Changes from 0.8.2 to 0.8.3:
* Independent T-Tests displayed the standard error of the difference
and the confidence interval for the unequal variances case, where
the equal variances case should have been. This has been fixed.
* REGRESSION now recognises /STATISTICS=CI(x) which causes confidence
intervals for the coefficients to be printed.
* When DESCRIPTIVES calculates Z scores, it now omits cases filtered
by the current FILTER settings.
* PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
- Dialog boxes with source variable lists can now choose the sort
order; right click and select from the popup menu.
- File|Open now allows an encoding to be selected for opening
system files.
- File|Display Data File Information|External File... now allows an
encoding to be selected.
- A problem with the Means dialog has been resolved (bug #41433).
- Several problems related to the input of spreadsheets have been
fixed (bug #41657, #41620
* System file related improvements:
- With ENCODING="DETECT", SYSFILE INFO can now help the user to
pick an encoding for reading a system file that does not identify
its own encoding
- SYSFILE INFO now accepts an ENCODING subcommand to specify the
character encoding of string data in the system file.
- Variable labels over 255 bytes long are now accepted without
truncation (bug #41863).
- System files that contain duplicate variable names may now be
read successfully (bug #41475).
Changes from 0.8.1 to 0.8.2:
* Charts are now rendered with colours from the Tango palette instead
of fully saturated primaries.
* Support for new system file variants:
- PSPP can now read and write ZCOMPRESSED system files, which
compress data much more effectively than older "compressed"
files. (The older format is still supported.)
- PSPP can now decrypt encrypted system files, using the new
pspp-convert utility. The encrypted system file format is
unacceptably insecure, so to discourage its use PSPP and PSPPIRE
do not directly read or write this format.
* Missing values for long string variables are now read from and
written to system files in an SPSS-compatible fashion.
(Earlier versions of PSPP that supported missing values for long
string variables wrote them to system files in an SPSS-incompatible
way. To fix the problem, read the system file with this version of
PSPP and then save a new copy of it.)
* pspp-convert, a new standalone utility for converting SPSS system
and portable files to other formats, is now included. The initial
version supports comma-separated value files as output format.
pspp-convert can also decrypt encrypted system files.
* Build changes:
- zlib is now a required dependency. (Previously it was optional.)
Changes from 0.8.0 to 0.8.1:
* New commands:
- VARIABLE ROLE.
* Changes to existing commands:
- CROSSTABS: The requirement that one expected count must be less than five
before Fishers Exact Test will be reported has been removed.
* PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
- A new set of icons has been contributed.
- Syntax windows now parse syntax in "auto" mode, which in practice
should mean that both "batch" and "interactive" syntax now works,
instead of just "interactive" syntax.
- The variable pane of data windows now include a Role column.
* Notable bug fixes:
- System files written by IBM SPSS 21 are now read without warnings.
- System files written by "VOXCO INTERVIEWER 4.3" are now read
without warnings.
- PSPPIRE should now more gracefully handle syntax files that contain
errors.
Changes from 0.6.2 to 0.8.0:
* New commands:
- ADD FILES
- CORRELATIONS
- DATAFILE ATTRIBUTES
- DATASET ACTIVATE
- DATASET CLOSE
- DATASET COPY
- DATASET DECLARE
- DATASET DISPLAY
- DATASET NAME
- LOGISTIC REGRESSION
- MATCH FILES
- MEANS
- MRSETS
- PRESERVE and RESTORE
- QUICK CLUSTER
- RELIABILITY
- ROC
- SAVE TRANSLATE to CSV and tab-delimited files
- UPDATE
- VARIABLE ATTRIBUTES
* Changes to existing commands:
- AUTORECODE has a new GROUP subcommand.
- CROSSTABS has been re-implemented to fix numerous bugs.
- EXAMINE: /MISSING=LISTWISE is now the default.
- DO REPEAT command has been reimplemented. Now, when DO REPEAT
contains an INCLUDE or INSERT command, substitutions are not
applied to the included file.
- FILE HANDLE has a new ENDS subcommand to select CR or CRLF new-lines.
- HOST has been updated to use more modern syntax.
- Most commands that work with data files now support a new
ENCODING subcommand.
- MISSING VALUES can now assign missing values to long string
variables.
- ONEWAY: the POSTHOC subcommand is now implemented.
- The following new subcommands to NPAR TESTS have been implemented:
COCHRAN, FRIEDMAN, JONCKHEERE-TERPSTRA, KENDALL, KRUSKAL-WALLIS, MANN-WHITNEY,
MCNEMAR, SIGN, WILCOXON, and RUNS
- SET and SHOW no longer have ENDCMD, NULLINE, PROMPT, CPROMPT, and
DPROMPT subcommands. The defaults are now fixed values.
- SHOW now has a JOURNAL subcommand, to show the location of the
journal file.
- VALUE LABELS can now assign value labels to long string
variables.
* Other language changes:
- The new DATASET commands replace the "scratch file" PSPP
extension, which is no longer supported.
- Strings may now include arbitrary Unicode code points specified
in hexadecimal, using the syntax U'hhhh'. For example, Unicode
code point U+1D11E, the musical G clef character, may be
expressed as U'1D11E'.
See the "Tokens" section in the PSPP manual for more information.
- In previous versions of PSPP, in a string expressed in
hexadecimal with X'hh' syntax, the hexadecimal digits expressed
bytes in the locale encoding. In this version of PSPP, X'hh'
syntax always expresses bytes in UTF-8 encoding.
See the "Tokens" section in the PSPP manual for more information.
* PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
- Added support for non-ASCII characters in strings, labels and
variable names.
- A "Split Window" function is available, which makes it easier to
see different parts of a large data file.
- Data files can now be opened by specifing their name as the first
argument. This means that on a properly configured desktop, double
clicking on an icon will open the file.
- Foreign formats, such as Gnumeric, OpenDocument and CSV can be imported
via using an "intelligent" application assistant dialog.
* Output changes:
- The new "cairo" output driver supports output in PostScript, PDF,
and SVG formats. Its functionality is a superset of that of the
"postscript" driver, which has been removed. You must have Cairo
and Pango installed to build the "cairo" driver.
- Charts are now produced with Cairo and Pango, instead of libplot.
Without them, the new graphing features will not work. If you do
not have Cairo and Pango installed, you must run `configure' with
--without-cairo.
- The plain text output driver now properly supports multibyte UTF-8
characters, including double-width characters and combining
accents.
- Output to OpenDocument format is now supported.
- The HTML output is much improved.
* The "pspp" program has a new option --batch (or -b) that selects
"batch" syntax mode. In previous versions of PSPP this syntax mode
was the default. Now a new "auto" syntax mode is the default. In
"auto" mode, PSPP interprets most syntax files correctly regardless
of their intended syntax mode.
See the "Syntax Variants" section in the PSPP manual for more
information.
* The "pspp" program has a new option --syntax-encoding that
specifies the encoding for syntax files listed on the command line,
as well as the default encoding for syntax files included with
INCLUDE or INSERT. The default is to accept the system locale
encoding, UTF-8, UTF-16, or UTF-32, automatically detecting which
one the system file uses.
See the documentation for the INSERT command in the PSPP manual for
more information.
* Text data files that PRINT and WRITE creates now use the system
native line ends by default (CRLF on Windows, LF only elsewhere).
Use the new ENDS subcommand on FILE HANDLE to override the default.
* A new Perl module allows Perl programs to read and write PSPP
system files.
* A tutorial chapter has been added to the user manual.
Changes from 0.6.1 to 0.6.2:
* New translations:
- Dutch, thanks to Harry Thijssen.
- Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Michel Boaventura.
Thanks for translations are also due to the coordinators at
translationproject.org.
* Statistical bug fixes:
- REGRESSION: Report correct standard error of the estimate (bug
#25677).
- T-TEST: Report correct significance of paired sample T-test in
the common case (bug #26936) and corner cases. Thanks to Mike
Griffiths and Matej Cepl for reporting these bugs.
* Build fixes and changes:
- Fix build with GTK+ 2.17.4 and later.
- Make running "make" after running "configure" with different
settings reliably rebuild version.c.
- Cygwin and MinGW build fixes.
- Fixes for building with recent gnulib.
- The Makefile now honors two new variables, PSPP_LDFLAGS and
PSPPIRE_LDFLAGS, that affect linking of the PSPP and PSPPIRE
binaries, respectively. This makes building easier for some
packagers.
- Fixes for "configure --enable-relocatable" (bug #25508).
* Data file bug fixes and changes:
- Fix reading text data files that contain a mix of white space
and commas. Now "a ,b" is treated as two fields containing "a"
and "b"; previously it was treated as three, with an empty field
in the middle.
- Fix writing corrupted .sav files on Windows.
- Fix writing variable labels longer than 252 bytes to save files.
Thanks to Robert Westlund for reporting this bug.
- Fix writing corrupted .por files (bug #26034).
- Fix reading .por files whose initial lines are not padded out
with spaces as expected.
- PSPP will no longer issue warnings about some .sav file records
or values that it does not understand. These warnings were
harmless, but needlessly alarmed some users.
- Fix crash reading empty string fields from PostgreSQL databases.
* Bug fixes that affect PSPP and PSPPIRE:
- Users may now control precision of output statistics. Instead
of hard coding the width and decimals of output numbers, respect
the default format in most instances. Counts are now normally
displayed with the format of the weight variable, if any.
- Fix crash when an INSERT command specifies the name of a file
that does not exist (bug #24569).
- Fix crash when CROSSTABS specifies a long-string variable (bugs
#24557 and #26131).
- Fix crash drawing pie charts with many segments.
- Fix crash when NUMERIC specifies an invalid format.
* PSPPIRE bug fixes and changes:
- On Windows, write the output file to the user's home directory
instead of the current directory, to better match user
expectations.
- Some data editor fixes.
* Documentation:
- Fix typo in BINOMIAL section of user manual (bug #25892).
Changes from 0.6.0 to 0.6.1:
* Statistical bug fixes:
- Report correct standardized regression coefficients in linear
regression output (bug #23567).
* Bug fixes that affect PSPP and PSPPIRE:
- Avoid crash with pie charts (bug #24014).
- Don't append % to count totals (bug #24003).
- Don't crash on bad input (bug #24031).
- Don't crash if "end data." is not left aligned (bug #24115).
- Change default workspace value to 64 MB, to avoid unnecessary
disk accesses on modern machines.
* PSPPIRE bug fixes:
- Add ".sav" or ".por" suffix to filename when saving with Save_As
(bug #23137).
- Make it possible to reopen the output window on Windows (bug
#24033).
- A POSIX regular expression library is now included and used
automatically if the host does not have one or has one that is
inadequate.
* Build fixes and changes:
- Work around bug in GSL that prevented build with recent GCC
versions without manually adding -fgnu89-inline to CFLAGS.
- Also warn about missing prerequisites as we encounter them (bug
#24445).
- Distribute necessary files to allow users working from the
distributed tarball to configure with --enable-gui-tools.
- Append $(EXEEXT_FOR_BUILD) to output file name when building
q2c, fixing build problems on Windows.
- GSL 1.8 or later is now required.
- Build errors with --enable-relocatable were fixed.
* The German translations were removed, since native German speakers
found them too poor to be useful.
Changes from 0.4.0 to 0.6.0:
* The PSPP license is now version 3 or later of the GNU General
Public License. Previously, it was version 2 or later.
* PSPP now has a graphical interface, called PSPPIRE. This
interface allows you to enter data and variable definitions
interactively. Commands may be executed in syntax form, or by
using the interactive dialog boxes available from the dropdown
menus.
* A few sample syntax files are now included in the `examples'
directory.
* Numerous major and minor bugs have been fixed.
Build changes:
* The INSTALL file now reflects the details of how to install
PSPP. It is a tailored version of the generic installation
instructions, instead of a verbatim copy.
* iconv, which is ordinarily installed as part of a Unix-like
system, is now required. If you don't have it already, you can
install GNU libiconv (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/).
* libxml2 and zlib are new optional dependencies. They are
required to use PSPP's support for reading Gnumeric files.
Statistical procedure changes:
* REGRESSION is a new procedure for fitting linear models to data
via least-squares estimation.
* NPAR TESTS is a new procedure for non-parametric tests. In this
release, it supports binomial and chi-square tests.
* RANK is a new procedure to rank variables. It supports numerous
forms of ranking.
* FREQUENCIES can now output histograms and pie charts. These
features were present in earlier releases, but not documented.
User interface changes:
* In many situations where PSPP once terminated with a fatal
error, PSPP now recovers and continues execution.
* PSPP is now able to start up and run even if it cannot find its
configuration files.
* Journaling of interactive commands to a disk file is now
implemented. By default, journaling is enabled, to a file named
`pspp.jnl' in the current directory. SET JOURNAL may be used to
control journaling.
* The use of `+' between syntax file names on the command line to
prevent the dictionary from being cleared between their
executions is no longer supported. All syntax files are now
executed as if `+' had been specified.
* The -d/--define and -u/--undef command line options are no
longer supported. Instead, use /usr/bin/env or shell primitives
to define or clear environment variables before invoking PSPP.
* If a syntax file named named `rc' is found in a configuration
directory (such as $HOME/.pspp), it is executed before any
syntax file specified on the command line. The -r or
--no-statrc command line option may be used to disable this
behavior.
Output changes:
* Output configuration options have changed. Please refer to the
manual for a full description of the available options.
In consequence, you will need to reinstall your "devices" file.
"make install" will do this for you.
* Most error messages are now written to PSPP output files by
default. SET ERROR can be used to disable this behavior.
* When invoked interactively, PSPP now by default produces output
on the terminal, piping it through the "more" program.
Previously, by default output was written only to file
pspp.list. On most terminals, the page length used for output
automatically adapts to the terminal size, even if the terminal
is resized.
* ASCII driver:
- This driver now supports charts in output. Charts are written
as separate files that the main output file refers to. By
default, charts are written in PNG format to files named
pspp-1.png, pspp-2.png, and so on.
- Configurations are provided that use VT100 (and xterm)
line-drawing characters in tables. The option "-o list-vt100"
requests use of this device for output to pspp.list.
* PostScript driver:
- The default paper size is now determined using the PAPERSIZE
environment variable, or the LC_PAPER locale category on
systems that support it. If these are not set, the default is
now A4, instead of US letter. To make US letter the default,
set PAPERSIZE to "letter" in your environment.
- Font metrics are now read from AFM files, instead of
Groff-format metrics files. PostScript fonts can now be
embedded in output.
In consequence, you will need to install an AFM file for each
font used in PostScript output. "make install" will install
AFM files for the standard PostScript fonts, including the
ones that the PostScript driver uses by default.
- Standard paper sizes no longer need to be specified through a
configuration file. The "papersize" configuration file is no
longer needed, or supported.
- The PostScript prologue is no longer obtained from the
"ps-prologue" configuration file. This configuration file is
no longer needed, or supported.
* HTML driver:
- The HTML prologue is no longer obtained from the
"html-prologue" configuration file. This configuration file
is no longer needed, or supported.
Command language changes:
* The following commands are new:
- GET DATA, which currently supports reading Gnumeric files and
text data files. It will be extended later to read other
types of foreign data.
- CD, to change the current directory.
- INSERT, to execute a syntax file.
- DELETE VARIABLES, to remove variables from the active file
dictionary.
- ADD DOCUMENT, to add text to active file documents.
- CLOSE FILE HANDLE (a PSPP extension; see below).
- XEXPORT, a PSPP extension that is a transformation equivalent
to EXPORT.
* The following functions for transformation expressions are new:
- DATEDIFF, for computing the difference of two dates.
- DATESUM, for advancing a date by a specified duration.
- VALUELABEL, to obtain the value label for a value.
* PSPP now supports very long string variables (over 255 bytes
long).
* MATCH FILES now supports the FIRST and LAST subcommands.
* Previous versions of PSPP prohibited using commands to both read and
write a single file at the same time. Now, PSPP allows this, and
the new version of the file atomically replaces the old version.
* The following commands are no longer available. They will be
re-implemented in a later release:
- CLEAR TRANSFORMATIONS
- MATRIX DATA
- REPEATING DATA
* The PROCESS IF command, which was deprecated, has been removed.
You may replace any usage of it by SELECT IF following
TEMPORARY, which has the same effect.
* The output format for variables created by VECTOR may now be
specified as part of the VECTOR syntax.
"Scratch files", a new PSPP extension:
A scratch file, like a system file, consists of a dictionary and
any number of cases. Small scratch files are stored in memory;
one that grows too large is written to disk. By default, any file
handle whose name begins with # is assumed to refer to a scratch
file.
Scratch files can be used just about anywhere a system or portable
file can be used. Also, portable files are now allowed in most
places that system files were allowed in previous PSPP version.
A new CLOSE FILE HANDLE command allows the storage associated with
scratch files to be freed. It also allows file handles to be
reassigned to new files.
For more information on scratch files, refer to the "File Handles"
section in the PSPP manual. For specifics of what commands now
allow what kinds of files to be specified, refer to the
documentation on those particular commands.
Data access changes:
* Binary formats and IBM/360 formats, including ASCII/EBCDIC
translation, are now supported. Use FILE HANDLE to specify the
format of these files.
* Little-endian, big-endian, and VAX-endian formats are now
supported for integer binary formats when reading and writing
data files. The new RIB and WIB subcommands on the SET command
control endianness of integer data. The default is the host's
native endianness.
* IEEE 754, VAX, and IBM hexadecimal formats are now supported for
floating point binary formats when reading and writing data
files. The new RRB and WRB subcommands on the SET command
control the floating point format. The default is the host's
native floating point format.
* DATA LIST now supports the SKIP subcommand, to skip records at
the beginning of a file. For compatibility, DATA LIST now
treats N format as F format for FREE and LIST format input.
* The SAVE and XSAVE commands now support the UNSELECTED,
PERMISSIONS, NAMES, and MAP subcommands.
* The EXPORT command has been re-implemented to obtain better
results. Support for the UNSELECTED, DIGITS, and TYPE
subcommands has been added.
* For compatibility, PRINT now inserts a space at the beginning of
every output line, even lines that would otherwise be blank,
when OUTFILE is specified. (The behavior of WRITE is
unchanged.)
* For compatibility, PRINT EJECT now inserts the digit `1' at the
beginning of each line that should begin a new page.
* For compatibility, WRITE now outputs the system-missing value as
a field filled with spaces. Binary formats are an exception.
(The behavior of PRINT is unchanged.)
Documentation:
* Input and output format descriptions have been rewritten. They
now precisely describe what is accepted on input and written on
output.
* The descriptions of the PSPP system and portable file formats
have been extensively revised and improved.
For developers, the build system now requires Autoconf 2.60 and
Automake 1.10.
Changes from 0.3.0 to 0.4.0:
Changes in build dependencies:
* The GNU Scientific Library (libgsl), version 1.6 or later, is
now required.
* libplot from GNU plotutils is optional. Without it, the new
graphing features will not work. If you do not have it
installed, you must run `configure' with --without-libplot.
* libgmp2 is no longer a dependency.
Newly implemented commands and statistical features:
* EXAMINE, including its graphing features.
* FREQUENCIES now supports percentiles.
* ONEWAY.
* PERMISSIONS.
* SHOW.
* SORT CASES now sorts stably, that is, two cases with equal sort
criteria will be in the same relative order before and after the
sort.
* T-TEST (re-written).
* DATE and USE. These commands are parsed but otherwise ignored,
to enhance compatibility with certain command files that invoke
them unnecessarily.
* VARIABLE WIDTH, VARIABLE ALIGNMENT, and VARIABLE LEVEL. These
currently have no effect on PSPP output, but their values are
written to and read from system files and thus may affect
third-party software.
* SET EPOCH implemented.
* DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST now support arbitrary field
delimiters.
* FILE HANDLE now supports custom tab widths.
Long variable names (and other identifiers) are now supported. Up
to the first 64 bytes of each identifier is significant. PSPP now
reads and writes system files compatible with SPSS version 12.
New --algorithm and --syntax command line options allow
SPSS-compatible or enhanced modes to be selected.
Support for transformation expressions has been rewritten and
significantly improved. Refer to the manual for details.
Calculation of moments (mean, standard deviation, kurtosis,
skewness) has been rewritten and should now be more accurate. In
--algorithm=enhanced mode moments may be more accurate than SPSS in
some cases.
Numerous bugs have been fixed, too many to mention here. Many new
tests have been added, leading to the discovery and fixing of many
of these bugs.
The ASCII output driver can now squeeze multiple blank lines into
single blank lines.
Much of the code has been rewritten and refactored. It is now much
cleaner.
The FILE TYPE and REPEATING DATA commands have been disabled for
this release because their implementations were deemed too buggy to
be useful. They will be fixed and replaced in a future release.
New pspp-mode for Emacs (in pspp-mode.el).
Added rudimentary command-line completion for interactive input.
lib/julcal and lib/dcdflib are no longer used, so they have been
removed.
For developers, the build system now requires Autoconf 2.58 and
Automake 1.7. The included gettext has been updated to version
0.12.1.
Some reports state that Texinfo 4.8, the latest version, may be
necessary to successfully format the documentation on some systems.
Version 0.3.0 changes since 0.2.3:
Bugs fixed:
* Using alphanumeric variables in functions under AGGREGATE
segfaulted. Fixed.
* Under certain circumstances, the final case would be omitted
from the results of an AGGREGATE operation. Fixed.
* Undefined behavior was invoked by referencing a freed pointer
under certain circumstances. Fixed.
* A wrong record size was displayed when paging the active file to
disk. Fixed.
* Not having enough temporary space for sorting caused a core
dump. Fixed.
* Syntax errors in function descriptions on AGGREGATE caused core
dumps. Fixed.
* A null pointer was dereferenced, causing a core dump, when
PERCENTILES was specified on FREQUENCIES. This fixes the
problem, but PSPP still doesn't calculate percentiles.
* SORT always sorted in ascending order. Fixed.
* Some minor memory leaks in the expression parser were removed.
* Many assertions fixed for strict ANSI C compliance.
New features:
* SET ECHO ON now implemented, but turned off by default.
* PRINT specifier supported on END REPEAT.
Other:
* System libgmp2 library is used if installed instead of
unconditionally using the included libgmp2 subset.
* Extensive code cleanup, which continues.
* Added CORRELATIONS command parser, but not implemented.
Version 0.2.3 changes since 0.2.2:
Bugs fixed:
* SPLIT FILE with a string variable caused a core dump. Fixed.
* Nested INCLUDEs didn't work. Fixed.
* The MATCH FILES procedure set the values of variables not present
to 0. It should have been SYSMIS. This is now fixed.
* The REMARK command was too aggressive about skipping lines. It
didn't like being the last command in a file.
* Comment parsing wasn't consistent with the rest of the code in its
idea of where one command ends and another starts. This meant
that sometimes commands would be mysteriously ignored. Thanks to
Dr. Dirk Melcher <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
* The TABLE subcommand on MATCH FILES worked only erratically at
best. This fixes it. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
<BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
* VARIABLE LABELS rejected a slash before the first variable
specification, contradicting the documentation. Thanks to Walter
M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for reporting this bug.
* Because of an incorrect optimization in memory allocation,
CROSSTABS sometimes segfaulted when asked to output multiple
tables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
reporting this bug.
* CROSSTABS didn't display value labels for column and row
variables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
reporting this bug.
* WRITE didn't write line ends. Fixed. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
<BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
* The TABLE subcommand on MATCH FILES worked only erratically at
best. This fixes it. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
<BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
* VARIABLE LABELS rejected a slash before the first variable
specification, contradicting the documentation. Thanks to Walter
M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for reporting this bug.
* Because of an incorrect optimization in memory allocation,
CROSSTABS sometimes segfaulted when asked to output multiple
tables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
reporting this bug.
* CROSSTABS didn't display value labels for column and row
variables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
reporting this bug.
* WRITE didn't write line ends. Fixed. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
<BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
* MATCH FILES corrupted memory and dumped core on some syntax
errors. Fixed.
* MATCH FILES should set numeric values not available to the
system-missing value, not to 0. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
<BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
* KEEP didn't work properly on the SAVE procedure. Fixed. Thanks
to Ralf Geschke <ralf@kuerbis.org> for reporting this bug.
* Memory leak fix.
* Some systems didn't like the way open_file was coded. Thanks to
Hankin <hankin@rogue.consultco.com> for pointing this out.
* The SAVE procedure didn't save long string variables properly.
Fixed by this patch. Thanks to Hankin
<hankin@rogue.consultco.com> for this patch.
* Minor documentation fixes for MATCH FILES.
Version 0.2.2 changes since 0.2.1:
Bugs fixed:
* Fix behavior of PRINT SPACE for negative arguments.
* Fix reading some unusual system files.
* Fix LIST problems with very long variables. Thanks to Hankin
<hankin@dunno.com> for this bug report.
* Fix problems with some string format specifiers.
* Fix use of $CASENUM in expressions. Thanks to Dirk Melcher
<BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
* Additional DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST fixes. Thanks to
Hankin <hankin@dunno.com> again on this one.
* Sometimes you may encounter a PSPP script that has to be
interpreted in interactive mode. Now you can use the -i flag to
do this.
* Warnings for egcs 1.1.1 cleaned up. (However you'll get lots of
`unused variable' warnings under gcc 2.7.2.3, fixing this will
take more effort.)
* Tests fixed.
* The files in gmp need the internationalization directory in
their include path. Thanks to OKUJI Yoshinori
<okuji@kuicr.kyoto-u.ac.jp> for pointing this out.
Version 0.2.1 changes since 0.2.0:
Bugs fixed:
* Remember to include examples/ directory in distribution :-)
* Fixed gmp compile problems for some non-i386 architectures.
Thanks to Hans Olav Eggestad <olav@jordforsk.nlh.no> and others
for reporting this.
* DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST parsing of input files is now
matches the documented behavior exactly, and error messages are
more helpful. Thanks to Mark H. Wood <mwood@IUPUI.Edu>.
Version 0.2.0 changes since 0.1.0:
Procedures now implemented:
* CROSSTABS. Please see documentation for caveats.
Transformations and utilities now implemented:
* AGGREGATE
* APPLY DICTIONARY
* CLEAR TRANSFORMATIONS
* DISPLAY (all subcommands).
* ERASE
* FLIP
* EXPORT
* HOST
* IMPORT
* MATCH FILES
* MATRIX DATA
* NEW FILE
* REPEATING DATA
Support for input and output through pipes: "|command" and
"command|" filenames; support for special filenames "-", "stdin",
"stdout", "stderr".
New command-line features:
* New option --testing-mode: Invoke heuristics to assist testing.
* New option --safer, -s: Don't allow certain unsafe operations.
* New option --command=CMD, -c CMD: Perform literal command CMD.
* rc file ~/.pspp/rc is executed before any other files.
* Now multiple syntax files can be specified.
Operator LAG is now implemented.
Added missing FILE subcommand to REREAD.
Table output manager completely rewritten.
Device configuration file syntax changed. You will need to
reinstall your `devices' file.
New output driver for HTML.
PostScript driver and prologue simplified.
Many bugs fixed. General source-code cleanup.
Added Texinfo documentation for:
* PSPP system file format
* PSPP portable file format
* How to write input for q2c parser generator
* HTML driver
PSPP language is now fully documented. Please report any
inaccuracies or omissions in the documentation.
Changes for version 0.1.0:
First public release. For changes from unreleased development
versions, please see ONEWS.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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