1 PSPP NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
2 Copyright (C) 1996-2000, 2008-2016, 2017, 2019, 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send PSPP bug reports to bug-gnu-pspp@gnu.org.
7 Changes from 1.4.0 to 1.5.0:
9 * HTML output is now HTML5 instead of HTML4.0 Transitional.
11 * The HOST command has been reimplemented. It now supports TIMELIMIT.
13 Changes from 1.2.0 to 1.4.0:
15 * The file pspp-mode.el (the pspp-mode for Emacs) is no longer distributed
16 with PSPP. Instead, it can be installed directly in emacs and is available
17 from https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/pspp-mode.html
19 * The Find dialog box, when searching for numeric values, will match only
20 to the precision of the variable's print format. This avoids behaviour
21 which is surprising to some users.
23 * PSPP now supports the SPSS viewer (.spv) format that SPSS 16 and later
24 use to save the contents of its output editor:
26 - PSPP and PSPPIRE can write output to .spv files.
28 - The new utility pspp-output can convert .spv files to other formats.
30 - The pspp-convert utility can now decrypt encrypted .spv files. The
31 encrypted viewer file format is unacceptably insecure, so to
32 discourage its use PSPP and PSPPIRE do not directly read or write
35 * A bug where the Data|Select Cases|Random Sample menu would generate
36 invalid syntax has been fixed.
38 * FREQUENCIES will emit a warning if one or more weight values are missing.
40 * Plain text output is no longer divided into pages, since it is now
41 rarely printed on paper.
43 * pspp-convert improvements:
45 - New "-a", "-l", "--password-list" options to search for an
46 encrypted file's password.
48 - New "--keep" and "--drop" options to output only selected variables.
50 - New "--recode", "--no-var-name", "--labels", "--print-formats",
51 "--decimal", "--delimiter", and "--qualifier" options to control
54 * Improvements to SAVE DATA COLLECTION support for MDD files.
56 * Bug fix for CVE-2018-20230.
58 * The /RENAME subcommand in SAVE TRANSLATE et al. has been extended
59 to support the syntax also accepted by other software.
61 * The EXAMINE command will now perform the Shapiro-Wilk test when
62 one or more plots are requested.
64 * The REGRESSION command now supports the /STATISTICS=TOL option which
65 outputs tolerance and variance inflation factor metrics for the data.
67 * The QUICK CLUSTER command now supports the /SAVE option which can
68 be used to save the cases' cluster membership and/or their distance
69 from the cluster centre to the active file.
71 * The MEANS command has been re-implemented.
73 * The GUI now has a sub-dialog for post-hoc tests of the oneway
76 * Gtk+3.22.0 or later must now be used when building.
78 * GRAPH: Categorical barcharts displaying percentages now show the
79 sub-category as a percentage of the primary category instead of the
82 * The Syntax Window now has a Find function to perform simple text
87 - The PRINT subcommand is now implemented.
91 Changes from 1.0.1 to 1.2.0:
93 * New experimental command SAVE DATA COLLECTION to save MDD files.
95 * MTIME and YMDHMS variable formats now supported.
99 - zlib is now a required dependency. (Previously it was optional.)
101 - Gtk+3.18.0 or later must now be used when building.
103 - The code implementing the sheet rendering has been removed. Instead we
104 use a third party library: spread-sheet-widget.
106 * The "NOMISSING" keyword when generating syntax for piecharts in the
107 frequencies command was omitted. This has been corrected.
109 Changes from 1.0.0 to 1.0.1:
111 * Bug fixes, including fixes for CVE-2017-12958, CVE-2017-12959,
112 CVE-2017-12960, and CVE-2017-12961.
114 Changes from 0.11.0 to 1.0.0:
116 * Translation updates.
118 Changes from 0.10.2 to 0.11.0:
120 * The REGRESSION command now has a /ORIGIN subcommand to perform
121 regression through the origin.
123 * The FACTOR command can now analyse matrix files prepared with MATRIX DATA.
125 * The FACTOR command can now print the anti-image matrices.
127 * The MATRIX DATA command has been added.
129 * Some inappropriate properties in selection dialogs have been corrected.
131 * A bug which could cause the HTML driver to go into a tight loop
134 * An error in the FREQUENCIES procedure, where the word "Mean" was
135 printed when "Variance" was appropriate has been fixed.
137 * The ncurses library is no longer required or used.
139 * A bug where the Mann-Whitney test would give misleading results
140 if run on multiple variables and MISSING=ANALAYSIS was specified
143 * Gtk+3.14.5 or later must now be used when building.
145 * Graphical user interface changes:
147 ** There is a new menu: Edit|Options
149 ** The Non Parametric Statistics Menu has a new item: "K Independent Samples".
151 ** Dialog boxes can now be canceled using the <Escape> key.
153 * The AUTORECODE command now accepts an optional / before INTO.
155 * The short form of the VECTOR command can now create string variables.
157 * Bug fixes, including fixes for CVE-2017-10791 and CVE-2017-10792.
159 Changes from 0.10.1 to 0.10.2:
161 * CROSSTABS implements a new COUNT subcommand to round case or cell
164 * Help will be opened as HTML in default browser if yelp
167 * When plotting scatterplots with only one dataset (the simple case)
168 the colour used for the dataset is now black. The previous default
169 from the Tango palette was too faint to see easily.
171 * The varible info dialog could previously only paste a single variable.
172 Now it can paste multiple variables.
174 * Bug fixes, including the following:
176 - T-test with independent samples GUI crashed with string
177 type variable as group variable.
179 - The variable info dialog showed the previous selected variable
180 superimposed with the currently selected one.
182 - The GLM command did not properly deal with missing values. This
185 Changes from 0.10.0 to 0.10.1:
187 * Bug fixes, including the following:
189 - A bug where certain dialog boxes could not be properly populated
192 - Various commands have been hardened against errors when called
195 * Translation updates. Thanks to our translators!
197 Changes from 0.8.5 to 0.10.0:
199 * The QUICK CLUSTER command has a /PRINT subcommand which shows
200 the initial cluster centres and the final cluster membership of
201 each case. The clustering algorithm has also been updated, so
202 as to produce better separated clusters.
204 * A Russian localisation has been contributed.
206 * The GRAPH command now has a /BAR subcommand to draw barcharts.
208 * If the DECIMAL character is set to COMMA then the ',' character
209 will not be treated as a separator by DATA LIST.
211 * The graphical user interface (psppire) has been changed as follows:
213 - It now uses Gtk+ version 3 instead of version 2. Accordingly, it has a
214 somewhat different look and feel.
216 - There is now a Graphs menu to access the GRAPH command.
218 - The status of dialog box widgets are now preserved between calls
219 to the same dialog box for the same dataset.
221 - The dialog box for the Logistic Regression command will now
222 infer that string variables or any varible with a "measure"
223 of Nominal or Ordinal are to be treated as categorical variables
224 and will generate syntax accordingly.
226 * The pspp-convert utility can now decrypt encrypted syntax files.
227 The encrypted syntax file format is unacceptably insecure, so to
228 discourage its use PSPP and PSPPIRE do not directly read or write
235 * The following functions for transformation expressions are new:
237 - REPLACE, for search-and-replace of one string with another.
239 - STRUNC, to truncate a string and trim trailing spaces.
241 - MEDIAN, to compute the median of its arguments.
243 - The TRUNC function in expressions now supports additional arguments
244 for truncating to values other than integers and to indicate a level
245 of rounding fuzz. The default rounding fuzz may now be controlled
246 and displayed with SET FUZZBITS and SHOW FUZZBITS, respectively.
248 * Bug fixes, including the following notable ones:
250 - The correlation coefficient in the paired samples t-test
251 procedure is now correctly calculated when presented with
254 - The ESCAPE subcommand has been removed from GET DATA /TYPE=TXT.
255 For compatibility, the behavior that ESCAPE enabled is now the
256 default and only supported behavior.
258 - Rendering of the variable and data sheets in right-to-left locales
261 - The Mann-Whitney test, when run on a dataset containing values
262 of the group variable, other than those defining the test groups,
263 would incorrectly calculate the ranks. This has been corrected.
265 * The IMPORTCASES subcommand on GET DATA is now ignored, for
268 Changes from 0.8.4 to 0.8.5:
270 * The FREQUENCIES and CROSSTABS commands can now generate barcharts.
272 * The FACTOR command can now perform PROMAX rotations.
274 * SPSS/PC+ system files are now supported on GET and other commands
275 that read SPSS system files. The pspp-convert program can now read
276 SPSS/PC+ system files. Writing the obsolete SPSS/PC+ system file
277 format is not supported.
279 * SYSFILE INFO can now read SPSS/PC+ system files and SPSS portable
282 * FREQUENCIES: A bug was fixed where an assertion failure occurred
283 when an empty dataset was presented.
285 * The GRAPH command is now available. Initially it supports
286 scatterplots and histograms.
288 * The RND operator in expressions now supports additional operands
289 for rounding to values other than integers and to indicate a level
290 of rounding fuzz. The default rounding fuzz may now be controlled
291 and displayed with SET FUZZBITS and SHOW FUZZBITS, respectively.
293 Changes from 0.8.3 to 0.8.4:
295 * Formatting of SYSFILE INFO output was made easier to read.
297 * Bug fixes, including the following notable ones:
299 - FREQUENCIES works properly for string variables. (This bug was
300 introduced in 0.8.2.)
302 - CROSSTABS now correctly computes all of the measures that it
303 offers. Some measures have been removed because they were not
306 - The NPAR TESTS calculation of significance for the RUNS
307 subcommand has been corrected.
309 - Planned comparisons in ONEWAY ANOVA now correctly handle negative
312 - The COUNT command now correctly treats missing values as
315 - Conformance fixes to Open Document output format.
317 Changes from 0.8.2 to 0.8.3:
319 * Independent T-Tests displayed the standard error of the difference
320 and the confidence interval for the unequal variances case, where
321 the equal variances case should have been. This has been fixed.
323 * REGRESSION now recognises /STATISTICS=CI(x) which causes confidence
324 intervals for the coefficients to be printed.
326 * When DESCRIPTIVES calculates Z scores, it now omits cases filtered
327 by the current FILTER settings.
329 * PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
331 - Dialog boxes with source variable lists can now choose the sort
332 order; right click and select from the popup menu.
334 - File|Open now allows an encoding to be selected for opening
337 - File|Display Data File Information|External File... now allows an
338 encoding to be selected.
340 - A problem with the Means dialog has been resolved (bug #41433).
342 - Several problems related to the input of spreadsheets have been
343 fixed (bug #41657, #41620
345 * System file related improvements:
347 - With ENCODING="DETECT", SYSFILE INFO can now help the user to
348 pick an encoding for reading a system file that does not identify
351 - SYSFILE INFO now accepts an ENCODING subcommand to specify the
352 character encoding of string data in the system file.
354 - Variable labels over 255 bytes long are now accepted without
355 truncation (bug #41863).
357 - System files that contain duplicate variable names may now be
358 read successfully (bug #41475).
360 Changes from 0.8.1 to 0.8.2:
362 * Charts are now rendered with colours from the Tango palette instead
363 of fully saturated primaries.
365 * Support for new system file variants:
367 - PSPP can now read and write ZCOMPRESSED system files, which
368 compress data much more effectively than older "compressed"
369 files. (The older format is still supported.)
371 - PSPP can now decrypt encrypted system files, using the new
372 pspp-convert utility. The encrypted system file format is
373 unacceptably insecure, so to discourage its use PSPP and PSPPIRE
374 do not directly read or write this format.
376 * Missing values for long string variables are now read from and
377 written to system files in an SPSS-compatible fashion.
379 (Earlier versions of PSPP that supported missing values for long
380 string variables wrote them to system files in an SPSS-incompatible
381 way. To fix the problem, read the system file with this version of
382 PSPP and then save a new copy of it.)
384 * pspp-convert, a new standalone utility for converting SPSS system
385 and portable files to other formats, is now included. The initial
386 version supports comma-separated value files as output format.
387 pspp-convert can also decrypt encrypted system files.
391 - zlib is now a required dependency. (Previously it was optional.)
393 Changes from 0.8.0 to 0.8.1:
399 * Changes to existing commands:
401 - CROSSTABS: The requirement that one expected count must be less than five
402 before Fishers Exact Test will be reported has been removed.
404 * PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
406 - A new set of icons has been contributed.
408 - Syntax windows now parse syntax in "auto" mode, which in practice
409 should mean that both "batch" and "interactive" syntax now works,
410 instead of just "interactive" syntax.
412 - The variable pane of data windows now include a Role column.
416 - System files written by IBM SPSS 21 are now read without warnings.
418 - System files written by "VOXCO INTERVIEWER 4.3" are now read
421 - PSPPIRE should now more gracefully handle syntax files that contain
424 Changes from 0.6.2 to 0.8.0:
430 - DATAFILE ATTRIBUTES
437 - LOGISTIC REGRESSION
441 - PRESERVE and RESTORE
445 - SAVE TRANSLATE to CSV and tab-delimited files
447 - VARIABLE ATTRIBUTES
449 * Changes to existing commands:
451 - AUTORECODE has a new GROUP subcommand.
453 - CROSSTABS has been re-implemented to fix numerous bugs.
455 - EXAMINE: /MISSING=LISTWISE is now the default.
457 - DO REPEAT command has been reimplemented. Now, when DO REPEAT
458 contains an INCLUDE or INSERT command, substitutions are not
459 applied to the included file.
461 - FILE HANDLE has a new ENDS subcommand to select CR or CRLF new-lines.
463 - HOST has been updated to use more modern syntax.
465 - Most commands that work with data files now support a new
468 - MISSING VALUES can now assign missing values to long string
471 - ONEWAY: the POSTHOC subcommand is now implemented.
473 - The following new subcommands to NPAR TESTS have been implemented:
474 COCHRAN, FRIEDMAN, JONCKHEERE-TERPSTRA, KENDALL, KRUSKAL-WALLIS, MANN-WHITNEY,
475 MCNEMAR, SIGN, WILCOXON, and RUNS
477 - SET and SHOW no longer have ENDCMD, NULLINE, PROMPT, CPROMPT, and
478 DPROMPT subcommands. The defaults are now fixed values.
480 - SHOW now has a JOURNAL subcommand, to show the location of the
483 - VALUE LABELS can now assign value labels to long string
486 * Other language changes:
488 - The new DATASET commands replace the "scratch file" PSPP
489 extension, which is no longer supported.
491 - Strings may now include arbitrary Unicode code points specified
492 in hexadecimal, using the syntax U'hhhh'. For example, Unicode
493 code point U+1D11E, the musical G clef character, may be
494 expressed as U'1D11E'.
496 See the "Tokens" section in the PSPP manual for more information.
498 - In previous versions of PSPP, in a string expressed in
499 hexadecimal with X'hh' syntax, the hexadecimal digits expressed
500 bytes in the locale encoding. In this version of PSPP, X'hh'
501 syntax always expresses bytes in UTF-8 encoding.
503 See the "Tokens" section in the PSPP manual for more information.
505 * PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
507 - Added support for non-ASCII characters in strings, labels and
510 - A "Split Window" function is available, which makes it easier to
511 see different parts of a large data file.
513 - Data files can now be opened by specifing their name as the first
514 argument. This means that on a properly configured desktop, double
515 clicking on an icon will open the file.
517 - Foreign formats, such as Gnumeric, OpenDocument and CSV can be imported
518 via using an "intelligent" application assistant dialog.
522 - The new "cairo" output driver supports output in PostScript, PDF,
523 and SVG formats. Its functionality is a superset of that of the
524 "postscript" driver, which has been removed. You must have Cairo
525 and Pango installed to build the "cairo" driver.
527 - Charts are now produced with Cairo and Pango, instead of libplot.
528 Without them, the new graphing features will not work. If you do
529 not have Cairo and Pango installed, you must run `configure' with
532 - The plain text output driver now properly supports multibyte UTF-8
533 characters, including double-width characters and combining
536 - Output to OpenDocument format is now supported.
538 - The HTML output is much improved.
540 * The "pspp" program has a new option --batch (or -b) that selects
541 "batch" syntax mode. In previous versions of PSPP this syntax mode
542 was the default. Now a new "auto" syntax mode is the default. In
543 "auto" mode, PSPP interprets most syntax files correctly regardless
544 of their intended syntax mode.
546 See the "Syntax Variants" section in the PSPP manual for more
549 * The "pspp" program has a new option --syntax-encoding that
550 specifies the encoding for syntax files listed on the command line,
551 as well as the default encoding for syntax files included with
552 INCLUDE or INSERT. The default is to accept the system locale
553 encoding, UTF-8, UTF-16, or UTF-32, automatically detecting which
554 one the system file uses.
556 See the documentation for the INSERT command in the PSPP manual for
559 * Text data files that PRINT and WRITE creates now use the system
560 native line ends by default (CRLF on Windows, LF only elsewhere).
561 Use the new ENDS subcommand on FILE HANDLE to override the default.
563 * A new Perl module allows Perl programs to read and write PSPP
566 * A tutorial chapter has been added to the user manual.
568 Changes from 0.6.1 to 0.6.2:
572 - Dutch, thanks to Harry Thijssen.
574 - Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Michel Boaventura.
576 Thanks for translations are also due to the coordinators at
577 translationproject.org.
579 * Statistical bug fixes:
581 - REGRESSION: Report correct standard error of the estimate (bug
584 - T-TEST: Report correct significance of paired sample T-test in
585 the common case (bug #26936) and corner cases. Thanks to Mike
586 Griffiths and Matej Cepl for reporting these bugs.
588 * Build fixes and changes:
590 - Fix build with GTK+ 2.17.4 and later.
592 - Make running "make" after running "configure" with different
593 settings reliably rebuild version.c.
595 - Cygwin and MinGW build fixes.
597 - Fixes for building with recent gnulib.
599 - The Makefile now honors two new variables, PSPP_LDFLAGS and
600 PSPPIRE_LDFLAGS, that affect linking of the PSPP and PSPPIRE
601 binaries, respectively. This makes building easier for some
604 - Fixes for "configure --enable-relocatable" (bug #25508).
606 * Data file bug fixes and changes:
608 - Fix reading text data files that contain a mix of white space
609 and commas. Now "a ,b" is treated as two fields containing "a"
610 and "b"; previously it was treated as three, with an empty field
613 - Fix writing corrupted .sav files on Windows.
615 - Fix writing variable labels longer than 252 bytes to save files.
616 Thanks to Robert Westlund for reporting this bug.
618 - Fix writing corrupted .por files (bug #26034).
620 - Fix reading .por files whose initial lines are not padded out
621 with spaces as expected.
623 - PSPP will no longer issue warnings about some .sav file records
624 or values that it does not understand. These warnings were
625 harmless, but needlessly alarmed some users.
627 - Fix crash reading empty string fields from PostgreSQL databases.
629 * Bug fixes that affect PSPP and PSPPIRE:
631 - Users may now control precision of output statistics. Instead
632 of hard coding the width and decimals of output numbers, respect
633 the default format in most instances. Counts are now normally
634 displayed with the format of the weight variable, if any.
636 - Fix crash when an INSERT command specifies the name of a file
637 that does not exist (bug #24569).
639 - Fix crash when CROSSTABS specifies a long-string variable (bugs
642 - Fix crash drawing pie charts with many segments.
644 - Fix crash when NUMERIC specifies an invalid format.
646 * PSPPIRE bug fixes and changes:
648 - On Windows, write the output file to the user's home directory
649 instead of the current directory, to better match user
652 - Some data editor fixes.
656 - Fix typo in BINOMIAL section of user manual (bug #25892).
658 Changes from 0.6.0 to 0.6.1:
660 * Statistical bug fixes:
662 - Report correct standardized regression coefficients in linear
663 regression output (bug #23567).
665 * Bug fixes that affect PSPP and PSPPIRE:
667 - Avoid crash with pie charts (bug #24014).
669 - Don't append % to count totals (bug #24003).
671 - Don't crash on bad input (bug #24031).
673 - Don't crash if "end data." is not left aligned (bug #24115).
675 - Change default workspace value to 64 MB, to avoid unnecessary
676 disk accesses on modern machines.
680 - Add ".sav" or ".por" suffix to filename when saving with Save_As
683 - Make it possible to reopen the output window on Windows (bug
686 - A POSIX regular expression library is now included and used
687 automatically if the host does not have one or has one that is
690 * Build fixes and changes:
692 - Work around bug in GSL that prevented build with recent GCC
693 versions without manually adding -fgnu89-inline to CFLAGS.
695 - Also warn about missing prerequisites as we encounter them (bug
698 - Distribute necessary files to allow users working from the
699 distributed tarball to configure with --enable-gui-tools.
701 - Append $(EXEEXT_FOR_BUILD) to output file name when building
702 q2c, fixing build problems on Windows.
704 - GSL 1.8 or later is now required.
706 - Build errors with --enable-relocatable were fixed.
708 * The German translations were removed, since native German speakers
709 found them too poor to be useful.
711 Changes from 0.4.0 to 0.6.0:
713 * The PSPP license is now version 3 or later of the GNU General
714 Public License. Previously, it was version 2 or later.
716 * PSPP now has a graphical interface, called PSPPIRE. This
717 interface allows you to enter data and variable definitions
718 interactively. Commands may be executed in syntax form, or by
719 using the interactive dialog boxes available from the dropdown
722 * A few sample syntax files are now included in the `examples'
725 * Numerous major and minor bugs have been fixed.
729 * The INSTALL file now reflects the details of how to install
730 PSPP. It is a tailored version of the generic installation
731 instructions, instead of a verbatim copy.
733 * iconv, which is ordinarily installed as part of a Unix-like
734 system, is now required. If you don't have it already, you can
735 install GNU libiconv (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/).
737 * libxml2 and zlib are new optional dependencies. They are
738 required to use PSPP's support for reading Gnumeric files.
740 Statistical procedure changes:
742 * REGRESSION is a new procedure for fitting linear models to data
743 via least-squares estimation.
745 * NPAR TESTS is a new procedure for non-parametric tests. In this
746 release, it supports binomial and chi-square tests.
748 * RANK is a new procedure to rank variables. It supports numerous
751 * FREQUENCIES can now output histograms and pie charts. These
752 features were present in earlier releases, but not documented.
754 User interface changes:
756 * In many situations where PSPP once terminated with a fatal
757 error, PSPP now recovers and continues execution.
759 * PSPP is now able to start up and run even if it cannot find its
762 * Journaling of interactive commands to a disk file is now
763 implemented. By default, journaling is enabled, to a file named
764 `pspp.jnl' in the current directory. SET JOURNAL may be used to
767 * The use of `+' between syntax file names on the command line to
768 prevent the dictionary from being cleared between their
769 executions is no longer supported. All syntax files are now
770 executed as if `+' had been specified.
772 * The -d/--define and -u/--undef command line options are no
773 longer supported. Instead, use /usr/bin/env or shell primitives
774 to define or clear environment variables before invoking PSPP.
776 * If a syntax file named named `rc' is found in a configuration
777 directory (such as $HOME/.pspp), it is executed before any
778 syntax file specified on the command line. The -r or
779 --no-statrc command line option may be used to disable this
784 * Output configuration options have changed. Please refer to the
785 manual for a full description of the available options.
787 In consequence, you will need to reinstall your "devices" file.
788 "make install" will do this for you.
790 * Most error messages are now written to PSPP output files by
791 default. SET ERROR can be used to disable this behavior.
793 * When invoked interactively, PSPP now by default produces output
794 on the terminal, piping it through the "more" program.
795 Previously, by default output was written only to file
796 pspp.list. On most terminals, the page length used for output
797 automatically adapts to the terminal size, even if the terminal
802 - This driver now supports charts in output. Charts are written
803 as separate files that the main output file refers to. By
804 default, charts are written in PNG format to files named
805 pspp-1.png, pspp-2.png, and so on.
807 - Configurations are provided that use VT100 (and xterm)
808 line-drawing characters in tables. The option "-o list-vt100"
809 requests use of this device for output to pspp.list.
813 - The default paper size is now determined using the PAPERSIZE
814 environment variable, or the LC_PAPER locale category on
815 systems that support it. If these are not set, the default is
816 now A4, instead of US letter. To make US letter the default,
817 set PAPERSIZE to "letter" in your environment.
819 - Font metrics are now read from AFM files, instead of
820 Groff-format metrics files. PostScript fonts can now be
823 In consequence, you will need to install an AFM file for each
824 font used in PostScript output. "make install" will install
825 AFM files for the standard PostScript fonts, including the
826 ones that the PostScript driver uses by default.
828 - Standard paper sizes no longer need to be specified through a
829 configuration file. The "papersize" configuration file is no
830 longer needed, or supported.
832 - The PostScript prologue is no longer obtained from the
833 "ps-prologue" configuration file. This configuration file is
834 no longer needed, or supported.
838 - The HTML prologue is no longer obtained from the
839 "html-prologue" configuration file. This configuration file
840 is no longer needed, or supported.
842 Command language changes:
844 * The following commands are new:
846 - GET DATA, which currently supports reading Gnumeric files and
847 text data files. It will be extended later to read other
848 types of foreign data.
850 - CD, to change the current directory.
852 - INSERT, to execute a syntax file.
854 - DELETE VARIABLES, to remove variables from the active file
857 - ADD DOCUMENT, to add text to active file documents.
859 - CLOSE FILE HANDLE (a PSPP extension; see below).
861 - XEXPORT, a PSPP extension that is a transformation equivalent
864 * The following functions for transformation expressions are new:
866 - DATEDIFF, for computing the difference of two dates.
868 - DATESUM, for advancing a date by a specified duration.
870 - VALUELABEL, to obtain the value label for a value.
872 * PSPP now supports very long string variables (over 255 bytes
875 * MATCH FILES now supports the FIRST and LAST subcommands.
877 * Previous versions of PSPP prohibited using commands to both read and
878 write a single file at the same time. Now, PSPP allows this, and
879 the new version of the file atomically replaces the old version.
881 * The following commands are no longer available. They will be
882 re-implemented in a later release:
884 - CLEAR TRANSFORMATIONS
890 * The PROCESS IF command, which was deprecated, has been removed.
891 You may replace any usage of it by SELECT IF following
892 TEMPORARY, which has the same effect.
894 * The output format for variables created by VECTOR may now be
895 specified as part of the VECTOR syntax.
897 "Scratch files", a new PSPP extension:
899 A scratch file, like a system file, consists of a dictionary and
900 any number of cases. Small scratch files are stored in memory;
901 one that grows too large is written to disk. By default, any file
902 handle whose name begins with # is assumed to refer to a scratch
905 Scratch files can be used just about anywhere a system or portable
906 file can be used. Also, portable files are now allowed in most
907 places that system files were allowed in previous PSPP version.
909 A new CLOSE FILE HANDLE command allows the storage associated with
910 scratch files to be freed. It also allows file handles to be
911 reassigned to new files.
913 For more information on scratch files, refer to the "File Handles"
914 section in the PSPP manual. For specifics of what commands now
915 allow what kinds of files to be specified, refer to the
916 documentation on those particular commands.
920 * Binary formats and IBM/360 formats, including ASCII/EBCDIC
921 translation, are now supported. Use FILE HANDLE to specify the
922 format of these files.
924 * Little-endian, big-endian, and VAX-endian formats are now
925 supported for integer binary formats when reading and writing
926 data files. The new RIB and WIB subcommands on the SET command
927 control endianness of integer data. The default is the host's
930 * IEEE 754, VAX, and IBM hexadecimal formats are now supported for
931 floating point binary formats when reading and writing data
932 files. The new RRB and WRB subcommands on the SET command
933 control the floating point format. The default is the host's
934 native floating point format.
936 * DATA LIST now supports the SKIP subcommand, to skip records at
937 the beginning of a file. For compatibility, DATA LIST now
938 treats N format as F format for FREE and LIST format input.
940 * The SAVE and XSAVE commands now support the UNSELECTED,
941 PERMISSIONS, NAMES, and MAP subcommands.
943 * The EXPORT command has been re-implemented to obtain better
944 results. Support for the UNSELECTED, DIGITS, and TYPE
945 subcommands has been added.
947 * For compatibility, PRINT now inserts a space at the beginning of
948 every output line, even lines that would otherwise be blank,
949 when OUTFILE is specified. (The behavior of WRITE is
952 * For compatibility, PRINT EJECT now inserts the digit `1' at the
953 beginning of each line that should begin a new page.
955 * For compatibility, WRITE now outputs the system-missing value as
956 a field filled with spaces. Binary formats are an exception.
957 (The behavior of PRINT is unchanged.)
961 * Input and output format descriptions have been rewritten. They
962 now precisely describe what is accepted on input and written on
965 * The descriptions of the PSPP system and portable file formats
966 have been extensively revised and improved.
968 For developers, the build system now requires Autoconf 2.60 and
971 Changes from 0.3.0 to 0.4.0:
973 Changes in build dependencies:
975 * The GNU Scientific Library (libgsl), version 1.6 or later, is
978 * libplot from GNU plotutils is optional. Without it, the new
979 graphing features will not work. If you do not have it
980 installed, you must run `configure' with --without-libplot.
982 * libgmp2 is no longer a dependency.
984 Newly implemented commands and statistical features:
986 * EXAMINE, including its graphing features.
988 * FREQUENCIES now supports percentiles.
996 * SORT CASES now sorts stably, that is, two cases with equal sort
997 criteria will be in the same relative order before and after the
1000 * T-TEST (re-written).
1002 * DATE and USE. These commands are parsed but otherwise ignored,
1003 to enhance compatibility with certain command files that invoke
1006 * VARIABLE WIDTH, VARIABLE ALIGNMENT, and VARIABLE LEVEL. These
1007 currently have no effect on PSPP output, but their values are
1008 written to and read from system files and thus may affect
1009 third-party software.
1011 * SET EPOCH implemented.
1013 * DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST now support arbitrary field
1016 * FILE HANDLE now supports custom tab widths.
1018 Long variable names (and other identifiers) are now supported. Up
1019 to the first 64 bytes of each identifier is significant. PSPP now
1020 reads and writes system files compatible with SPSS version 12.
1022 New --algorithm and --syntax command line options allow
1023 SPSS-compatible or enhanced modes to be selected.
1025 Support for transformation expressions has been rewritten and
1026 significantly improved. Refer to the manual for details.
1028 Calculation of moments (mean, standard deviation, kurtosis,
1029 skewness) has been rewritten and should now be more accurate. In
1030 --algorithm=enhanced mode moments may be more accurate than SPSS in
1033 Numerous bugs have been fixed, too many to mention here. Many new
1034 tests have been added, leading to the discovery and fixing of many
1037 The ASCII output driver can now squeeze multiple blank lines into
1040 Much of the code has been rewritten and refactored. It is now much
1043 The FILE TYPE and REPEATING DATA commands have been disabled for
1044 this release because their implementations were deemed too buggy to
1045 be useful. They will be fixed and replaced in a future release.
1047 New pspp-mode for Emacs (in pspp-mode.el).
1049 Added rudimentary command-line completion for interactive input.
1051 lib/julcal and lib/dcdflib are no longer used, so they have been
1054 For developers, the build system now requires Autoconf 2.58 and
1055 Automake 1.7. The included gettext has been updated to version
1058 Some reports state that Texinfo 4.8, the latest version, may be
1059 necessary to successfully format the documentation on some systems.
1061 Version 0.3.0 changes since 0.2.3:
1065 * Using alphanumeric variables in functions under AGGREGATE
1068 * Under certain circumstances, the final case would be omitted
1069 from the results of an AGGREGATE operation. Fixed.
1071 * Undefined behavior was invoked by referencing a freed pointer
1072 under certain circumstances. Fixed.
1074 * A wrong record size was displayed when paging the active file to
1077 * Not having enough temporary space for sorting caused a core
1080 * Syntax errors in function descriptions on AGGREGATE caused core
1083 * A null pointer was dereferenced, causing a core dump, when
1084 PERCENTILES was specified on FREQUENCIES. This fixes the
1085 problem, but PSPP still doesn't calculate percentiles.
1087 * SORT always sorted in ascending order. Fixed.
1089 * Some minor memory leaks in the expression parser were removed.
1091 * Many assertions fixed for strict ANSI C compliance.
1095 * SET ECHO ON now implemented, but turned off by default.
1097 * PRINT specifier supported on END REPEAT.
1101 * System libgmp2 library is used if installed instead of
1102 unconditionally using the included libgmp2 subset.
1104 * Extensive code cleanup, which continues.
1106 * Added CORRELATIONS command parser, but not implemented.
1108 Version 0.2.3 changes since 0.2.2:
1112 * SPLIT FILE with a string variable caused a core dump. Fixed.
1114 * Nested INCLUDEs didn't work. Fixed.
1116 * The MATCH FILES procedure set the values of variables not present
1117 to 0. It should have been SYSMIS. This is now fixed.
1119 * The REMARK command was too aggressive about skipping lines. It
1120 didn't like being the last command in a file.
1122 * Comment parsing wasn't consistent with the rest of the code in its
1123 idea of where one command ends and another starts. This meant
1124 that sometimes commands would be mysteriously ignored. Thanks to
1125 Dr. Dirk Melcher <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1127 * The TABLE subcommand on MATCH FILES worked only erratically at
1128 best. This fixes it. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1129 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1131 * VARIABLE LABELS rejected a slash before the first variable
1132 specification, contradicting the documentation. Thanks to Walter
1133 M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for reporting this bug.
1135 * Because of an incorrect optimization in memory allocation,
1136 CROSSTABS sometimes segfaulted when asked to output multiple
1137 tables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
1140 * CROSSTABS didn't display value labels for column and row
1141 variables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
1144 * WRITE didn't write line ends. Fixed. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1145 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1147 * The TABLE subcommand on MATCH FILES worked only erratically at
1148 best. This fixes it. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1149 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1151 * VARIABLE LABELS rejected a slash before the first variable
1152 specification, contradicting the documentation. Thanks to Walter
1153 M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for reporting this bug.
1155 * Because of an incorrect optimization in memory allocation,
1156 CROSSTABS sometimes segfaulted when asked to output multiple
1157 tables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
1160 * CROSSTABS didn't display value labels for column and row
1161 variables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
1164 * WRITE didn't write line ends. Fixed. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1165 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1167 * MATCH FILES corrupted memory and dumped core on some syntax
1170 * MATCH FILES should set numeric values not available to the
1171 system-missing value, not to 0. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1172 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1174 * KEEP didn't work properly on the SAVE procedure. Fixed. Thanks
1175 to Ralf Geschke <ralf@kuerbis.org> for reporting this bug.
1179 * Some systems didn't like the way open_file was coded. Thanks to
1180 Hankin <hankin@rogue.consultco.com> for pointing this out.
1182 * The SAVE procedure didn't save long string variables properly.
1183 Fixed by this patch. Thanks to Hankin
1184 <hankin@rogue.consultco.com> for this patch.
1186 * Minor documentation fixes for MATCH FILES.
1188 Version 0.2.2 changes since 0.2.1:
1192 * Fix behavior of PRINT SPACE for negative arguments.
1194 * Fix reading some unusual system files.
1196 * Fix LIST problems with very long variables. Thanks to Hankin
1197 <hankin@dunno.com> for this bug report.
1199 * Fix problems with some string format specifiers.
1201 * Fix use of $CASENUM in expressions. Thanks to Dirk Melcher
1202 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1204 * Additional DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST fixes. Thanks to
1205 Hankin <hankin@dunno.com> again on this one.
1207 * Sometimes you may encounter a PSPP script that has to be
1208 interpreted in interactive mode. Now you can use the -i flag to
1211 * Warnings for egcs 1.1.1 cleaned up. (However you'll get lots of
1212 `unused variable' warnings under gcc 2.7.2.3, fixing this will
1217 * The files in gmp need the internationalization directory in
1218 their include path. Thanks to OKUJI Yoshinori
1219 <okuji@kuicr.kyoto-u.ac.jp> for pointing this out.
1221 Version 0.2.1 changes since 0.2.0:
1225 * Remember to include examples/ directory in distribution :-)
1227 * Fixed gmp compile problems for some non-i386 architectures.
1228 Thanks to Hans Olav Eggestad <olav@jordforsk.nlh.no> and others
1231 * DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST parsing of input files is now
1232 matches the documented behavior exactly, and error messages are
1233 more helpful. Thanks to Mark H. Wood <mwood@IUPUI.Edu>.
1235 Version 0.2.0 changes since 0.1.0:
1237 Procedures now implemented:
1238 * CROSSTABS. Please see documentation for caveats.
1240 Transformations and utilities now implemented:
1243 * CLEAR TRANSFORMATIONS
1244 * DISPLAY (all subcommands).
1255 Support for input and output through pipes: "|command" and
1256 "command|" filenames; support for special filenames "-", "stdin",
1259 New command-line features:
1260 * New option --testing-mode: Invoke heuristics to assist testing.
1261 * New option --safer, -s: Don't allow certain unsafe operations.
1262 * New option --command=CMD, -c CMD: Perform literal command CMD.
1263 * rc file ~/.pspp/rc is executed before any other files.
1264 * Now multiple syntax files can be specified.
1266 Operator LAG is now implemented.
1268 Added missing FILE subcommand to REREAD.
1270 Table output manager completely rewritten.
1272 Device configuration file syntax changed. You will need to
1273 reinstall your `devices' file.
1275 New output driver for HTML.
1277 PostScript driver and prologue simplified.
1279 Many bugs fixed. General source-code cleanup.
1281 Added Texinfo documentation for:
1282 * PSPP system file format
1283 * PSPP portable file format
1284 * How to write input for q2c parser generator
1287 PSPP language is now fully documented. Please report any
1288 inaccuracies or omissions in the documentation.
1290 Changes for version 0.1.0:
1292 First public release. For changes from unreleased development
1293 versions, please see ONEWS.
1295 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
1296 Copyright information:
1298 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
1299 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
1300 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
1301 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
1303 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
1304 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
1305 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last
1309 version-control: never