1 PSPP NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
2 Copyright (C) 1996-2000, 2008-2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 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 1.4.1 to 1.5.3:
9 * The DEFINE command is now supported.
11 * An error in the displayed signficance of oneway anova
12 contrasts tests has been corrected.
14 * Added Drag-N-Drop in output view.
16 * The Explore GUI dialog supports the "Plots" subdialog. Boxplots, Q-Q Plots
17 and Spreadlevel plots are now also available via the GUI.
19 * The graphical user interface for importing spreadsheets has been improved.
20 The new interface provides the user with a preview of the data to be imported
21 and interactive methods to select the desired ranges.
23 * The user manual, in its Info and HTML versions, now includes
24 graphical output examples and screenshots.
28 - The Cairo and Pango libraries are now required.
30 - gettext 0.20 or later is now required.
32 * Output improvements:
34 - New drivers for output to TeX source files and to PNG files.
36 - Table output styles may now be set with the new option
37 --table-look and the new SET TLOOK command.
39 - New driver option "trim" to remove empty space from PDF,
40 PostScript, SVG, and PNG output files.
42 - The PDF output driver now adds an outline to allow PDF viewers to display
43 as a "table of contents" for the file.
45 - The HTML output driver has a new option "bare".
47 * New features in pspp-output:
49 - New --table-look and --nth-commands options.
51 - New get-table-look and convert-table-look commands.
53 Changes from 1.4.0 to 1.4.1:
57 * Translation updates.
59 * HTML output is now HTML5 instead of HTML4.0 Transitional.
61 * The HOST command has been reimplemented. It now supports TIMELIMIT.
63 Changes from 1.2.0 to 1.4.0:
65 * The file pspp-mode.el (the pspp-mode for Emacs) is no longer distributed
66 with PSPP. Instead, it can be installed directly in emacs and is available
67 from https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/pspp-mode.html
69 * The Find dialog box, when searching for numeric values, will match only
70 to the precision of the variable's print format. This avoids behaviour
71 which is surprising to some users.
73 * PSPP now supports the SPSS viewer (.spv) format that SPSS 16 and later
74 use to save the contents of its output editor:
76 - PSPP and PSPPIRE can write output to .spv files.
78 - The new utility pspp-output can convert .spv files to other formats.
80 - The pspp-convert utility can now decrypt encrypted .spv files. The
81 encrypted viewer file format is unacceptably insecure, so to
82 discourage its use PSPP and PSPPIRE do not directly read or write
85 * A bug where the Data|Select Cases|Random Sample menu would generate
86 invalid syntax has been fixed.
88 * FREQUENCIES will emit a warning if one or more weight values are missing.
90 * Plain text output is no longer divided into pages, since it is now
91 rarely printed on paper.
93 * pspp-convert improvements:
95 - New "-a", "-l", "--password-list" options to search for an
96 encrypted file's password.
98 - New "--keep" and "--drop" options to output only selected variables.
100 - New "--recode", "--no-var-name", "--labels", "--print-formats",
101 "--decimal", "--delimiter", and "--qualifier" options to control
104 * Improvements to SAVE DATA COLLECTION support for MDD files.
106 * Bug fix for CVE-2018-20230.
108 * The /RENAME subcommand in SAVE TRANSLATE et al. has been extended
109 to support the syntax also accepted by other software.
111 * The EXAMINE command will now perform the Shapiro-Wilk test when
112 one or more plots are requested.
114 * The REGRESSION command now supports the /STATISTICS=TOL option which
115 outputs tolerance and variance inflation factor metrics for the data.
117 * The QUICK CLUSTER command now supports the /SAVE option which can
118 be used to save the cases' cluster membership and/or their distance
119 from the cluster centre to the active file.
121 * The MEANS command has been re-implemented.
123 * The GUI now has a sub-dialog for post-hoc tests of the oneway
126 * Gtk+3.22.0 or later must now be used when building.
128 * GRAPH: Categorical barcharts displaying percentages now show the
129 sub-category as a percentage of the primary category instead of the
132 * The Syntax Window now has a Find function to perform simple text
137 - The PRINT subcommand is now implemented.
141 Changes from 1.0.1 to 1.2.0:
143 * New experimental command SAVE DATA COLLECTION to save MDD files.
145 * MTIME and YMDHMS variable formats now supported.
149 - zlib is now a required dependency. (Previously it was optional.)
151 - Gtk+3.18.0 or later must now be used when building.
153 - The code implementing the sheet rendering has been removed. Instead we
154 use a third party library: spread-sheet-widget.
156 * The "NOMISSING" keyword when generating syntax for piecharts in the
157 frequencies command was omitted. This has been corrected.
159 Changes from 1.0.0 to 1.0.1:
161 * Bug fixes, including fixes for CVE-2017-12958, CVE-2017-12959,
162 CVE-2017-12960, and CVE-2017-12961.
164 Changes from 0.11.0 to 1.0.0:
166 * Translation updates.
168 Changes from 0.10.2 to 0.11.0:
170 * The REGRESSION command now has a /ORIGIN subcommand to perform
171 regression through the origin.
173 * The FACTOR command can now analyse matrix files prepared with MATRIX DATA.
175 * The FACTOR command can now print the anti-image matrices.
177 * The MATRIX DATA command has been added.
179 * Some inappropriate properties in selection dialogs have been corrected.
181 * A bug which could cause the HTML driver to go into a tight loop
184 * An error in the FREQUENCIES procedure, where the word "Mean" was
185 printed when "Variance" was appropriate has been fixed.
187 * The ncurses library is no longer required or used.
189 * A bug where the Mann-Whitney test would give misleading results
190 if run on multiple variables and MISSING=ANALAYSIS was specified
193 * Gtk+3.14.5 or later must now be used when building.
195 * Graphical user interface changes:
197 ** There is a new menu: Edit|Options
199 ** The Non Parametric Statistics Menu has a new item: "K Independent Samples".
201 ** Dialog boxes can now be canceled using the <Escape> key.
203 * The AUTORECODE command now accepts an optional / before INTO.
205 * The short form of the VECTOR command can now create string variables.
207 * Bug fixes, including fixes for CVE-2017-10791 and CVE-2017-10792.
209 Changes from 0.10.1 to 0.10.2:
211 * CROSSTABS implements a new COUNT subcommand to round case or cell
214 * Help will be opened as HTML in default browser if yelp
217 * When plotting scatterplots with only one dataset (the simple case)
218 the colour used for the dataset is now black. The previous default
219 from the Tango palette was too faint to see easily.
221 * The varible info dialog could previously only paste a single variable.
222 Now it can paste multiple variables.
224 * Bug fixes, including the following:
226 - T-test with independent samples GUI crashed with string
227 type variable as group variable.
229 - The variable info dialog showed the previous selected variable
230 superimposed with the currently selected one.
232 - The GLM command did not properly deal with missing values. This
235 Changes from 0.10.0 to 0.10.1:
237 * Bug fixes, including the following:
239 - A bug where certain dialog boxes could not be properly populated
242 - Various commands have been hardened against errors when called
245 * Translation updates. Thanks to our translators!
247 Changes from 0.8.5 to 0.10.0:
249 * The QUICK CLUSTER command has a /PRINT subcommand which shows
250 the initial cluster centres and the final cluster membership of
251 each case. The clustering algorithm has also been updated, so
252 as to produce better separated clusters.
254 * A Russian localisation has been contributed.
256 * The GRAPH command now has a /BAR subcommand to draw barcharts.
258 * If the DECIMAL character is set to COMMA then the ',' character
259 will not be treated as a separator by DATA LIST.
261 * The graphical user interface (psppire) has been changed as follows:
263 - It now uses Gtk+ version 3 instead of version 2. Accordingly, it has a
264 somewhat different look and feel.
266 - There is now a Graphs menu to access the GRAPH command.
268 - The status of dialog box widgets are now preserved between calls
269 to the same dialog box for the same dataset.
271 - The dialog box for the Logistic Regression command will now
272 infer that string variables or any varible with a "measure"
273 of Nominal or Ordinal are to be treated as categorical variables
274 and will generate syntax accordingly.
276 * The pspp-convert utility can now decrypt encrypted syntax files.
277 The encrypted syntax file format is unacceptably insecure, so to
278 discourage its use PSPP and PSPPIRE do not directly read or write
285 * The following functions for transformation expressions are new:
287 - REPLACE, for search-and-replace of one string with another.
289 - STRUNC, to truncate a string and trim trailing spaces.
291 - MEDIAN, to compute the median of its arguments.
293 - The TRUNC function in expressions now supports additional arguments
294 for truncating to values other than integers and to indicate a level
295 of rounding fuzz. The default rounding fuzz may now be controlled
296 and displayed with SET FUZZBITS and SHOW FUZZBITS, respectively.
298 * Bug fixes, including the following notable ones:
300 - The correlation coefficient in the paired samples t-test
301 procedure is now correctly calculated when presented with
304 - The ESCAPE subcommand has been removed from GET DATA /TYPE=TXT.
305 For compatibility, the behavior that ESCAPE enabled is now the
306 default and only supported behavior.
308 - Rendering of the variable and data sheets in right-to-left locales
311 - The Mann-Whitney test, when run on a dataset containing values
312 of the group variable, other than those defining the test groups,
313 would incorrectly calculate the ranks. This has been corrected.
315 * The IMPORTCASES subcommand on GET DATA is now ignored, for
318 Changes from 0.8.4 to 0.8.5:
320 * The FREQUENCIES and CROSSTABS commands can now generate barcharts.
322 * The FACTOR command can now perform PROMAX rotations.
324 * SPSS/PC+ system files are now supported on GET and other commands
325 that read SPSS system files. The pspp-convert program can now read
326 SPSS/PC+ system files. Writing the obsolete SPSS/PC+ system file
327 format is not supported.
329 * SYSFILE INFO can now read SPSS/PC+ system files and SPSS portable
332 * FREQUENCIES: A bug was fixed where an assertion failure occurred
333 when an empty dataset was presented.
335 * The GRAPH command is now available. Initially it supports
336 scatterplots and histograms.
338 * The RND operator in expressions now supports additional operands
339 for rounding to values other than integers and to indicate a level
340 of rounding fuzz. The default rounding fuzz may now be controlled
341 and displayed with SET FUZZBITS and SHOW FUZZBITS, respectively.
343 Changes from 0.8.3 to 0.8.4:
345 * Formatting of SYSFILE INFO output was made easier to read.
347 * Bug fixes, including the following notable ones:
349 - FREQUENCIES works properly for string variables. (This bug was
350 introduced in 0.8.2.)
352 - CROSSTABS now correctly computes all of the measures that it
353 offers. Some measures have been removed because they were not
356 - The NPAR TESTS calculation of significance for the RUNS
357 subcommand has been corrected.
359 - Planned comparisons in ONEWAY ANOVA now correctly handle negative
362 - The COUNT command now correctly treats missing values as
365 - Conformance fixes to Open Document output format.
367 Changes from 0.8.2 to 0.8.3:
369 * Independent T-Tests displayed the standard error of the difference
370 and the confidence interval for the unequal variances case, where
371 the equal variances case should have been. This has been fixed.
373 * REGRESSION now recognises /STATISTICS=CI(x) which causes confidence
374 intervals for the coefficients to be printed.
376 * When DESCRIPTIVES calculates Z scores, it now omits cases filtered
377 by the current FILTER settings.
379 * PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
381 - Dialog boxes with source variable lists can now choose the sort
382 order; right click and select from the popup menu.
384 - File|Open now allows an encoding to be selected for opening
387 - File|Display Data File Information|External File... now allows an
388 encoding to be selected.
390 - A problem with the Means dialog has been resolved (bug #41433).
392 - Several problems related to the input of spreadsheets have been
393 fixed (bug #41657, #41620
395 * System file related improvements:
397 - With ENCODING="DETECT", SYSFILE INFO can now help the user to
398 pick an encoding for reading a system file that does not identify
401 - SYSFILE INFO now accepts an ENCODING subcommand to specify the
402 character encoding of string data in the system file.
404 - Variable labels over 255 bytes long are now accepted without
405 truncation (bug #41863).
407 - System files that contain duplicate variable names may now be
408 read successfully (bug #41475).
410 Changes from 0.8.1 to 0.8.2:
412 * Charts are now rendered with colours from the Tango palette instead
413 of fully saturated primaries.
415 * Support for new system file variants:
417 - PSPP can now read and write ZCOMPRESSED system files, which
418 compress data much more effectively than older "compressed"
419 files. (The older format is still supported.)
421 - PSPP can now decrypt encrypted system files, using the new
422 pspp-convert utility. The encrypted system file format is
423 unacceptably insecure, so to discourage its use PSPP and PSPPIRE
424 do not directly read or write this format.
426 * Missing values for long string variables are now read from and
427 written to system files in an SPSS-compatible fashion.
429 (Earlier versions of PSPP that supported missing values for long
430 string variables wrote them to system files in an SPSS-incompatible
431 way. To fix the problem, read the system file with this version of
432 PSPP and then save a new copy of it.)
434 * pspp-convert, a new standalone utility for converting SPSS system
435 and portable files to other formats, is now included. The initial
436 version supports comma-separated value files as output format.
437 pspp-convert can also decrypt encrypted system files.
441 - zlib is now a required dependency. (Previously it was optional.)
443 Changes from 0.8.0 to 0.8.1:
449 * Changes to existing commands:
451 - CROSSTABS: The requirement that one expected count must be less than five
452 before Fishers Exact Test will be reported has been removed.
454 * PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
456 - A new set of icons has been contributed.
458 - Syntax windows now parse syntax in "auto" mode, which in practice
459 should mean that both "batch" and "interactive" syntax now works,
460 instead of just "interactive" syntax.
462 - The variable pane of data windows now include a Role column.
466 - System files written by IBM SPSS 21 are now read without warnings.
468 - System files written by "VOXCO INTERVIEWER 4.3" are now read
471 - PSPPIRE should now more gracefully handle syntax files that contain
474 Changes from 0.6.2 to 0.8.0:
480 - DATAFILE ATTRIBUTES
487 - LOGISTIC REGRESSION
491 - PRESERVE and RESTORE
495 - SAVE TRANSLATE to CSV and tab-delimited files
497 - VARIABLE ATTRIBUTES
499 * Changes to existing commands:
501 - AUTORECODE has a new GROUP subcommand.
503 - CROSSTABS has been re-implemented to fix numerous bugs.
505 - EXAMINE: /MISSING=LISTWISE is now the default.
507 - DO REPEAT command has been reimplemented. Now, when DO REPEAT
508 contains an INCLUDE or INSERT command, substitutions are not
509 applied to the included file.
511 - FILE HANDLE has a new ENDS subcommand to select CR or CRLF new-lines.
513 - HOST has been updated to use more modern syntax.
515 - Most commands that work with data files now support a new
518 - MISSING VALUES can now assign missing values to long string
521 - ONEWAY: the POSTHOC subcommand is now implemented.
523 - The following new subcommands to NPAR TESTS have been implemented:
524 COCHRAN, FRIEDMAN, JONCKHEERE-TERPSTRA, KENDALL, KRUSKAL-WALLIS, MANN-WHITNEY,
525 MCNEMAR, SIGN, WILCOXON, and RUNS
527 - SET and SHOW no longer have ENDCMD, NULLINE, PROMPT, CPROMPT, and
528 DPROMPT subcommands. The defaults are now fixed values.
530 - SHOW now has a JOURNAL subcommand, to show the location of the
533 - VALUE LABELS can now assign value labels to long string
536 * Other language changes:
538 - The new DATASET commands replace the "scratch file" PSPP
539 extension, which is no longer supported.
541 - Strings may now include arbitrary Unicode code points specified
542 in hexadecimal, using the syntax U'hhhh'. For example, Unicode
543 code point U+1D11E, the musical G clef character, may be
544 expressed as U'1D11E'.
546 See the "Tokens" section in the PSPP manual for more information.
548 - In previous versions of PSPP, in a string expressed in
549 hexadecimal with X'hh' syntax, the hexadecimal digits expressed
550 bytes in the locale encoding. In this version of PSPP, X'hh'
551 syntax always expresses bytes in UTF-8 encoding.
553 See the "Tokens" section in the PSPP manual for more information.
555 * PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
557 - Added support for non-ASCII characters in strings, labels and
560 - A "Split Window" function is available, which makes it easier to
561 see different parts of a large data file.
563 - Data files can now be opened by specifing their name as the first
564 argument. This means that on a properly configured desktop, double
565 clicking on an icon will open the file.
567 - Foreign formats, such as Gnumeric, OpenDocument and CSV can be imported
568 via using an "intelligent" application assistant dialog.
572 - The new "cairo" output driver supports output in PostScript, PDF,
573 and SVG formats. Its functionality is a superset of that of the
574 "postscript" driver, which has been removed. You must have Cairo
575 and Pango installed to build the "cairo" driver.
577 - Charts are now produced with Cairo and Pango, instead of libplot.
578 Without them, the new graphing features will not work. If you do
579 not have Cairo and Pango installed, you must run `configure' with
582 - The plain text output driver now properly supports multibyte UTF-8
583 characters, including double-width characters and combining
586 - Output to OpenDocument format is now supported.
588 - The HTML output is much improved.
590 * The "pspp" program has a new option --batch (or -b) that selects
591 "batch" syntax mode. In previous versions of PSPP this syntax mode
592 was the default. Now a new "auto" syntax mode is the default. In
593 "auto" mode, PSPP interprets most syntax files correctly regardless
594 of their intended syntax mode.
596 See the "Syntax Variants" section in the PSPP manual for more
599 * The "pspp" program has a new option --syntax-encoding that
600 specifies the encoding for syntax files listed on the command line,
601 as well as the default encoding for syntax files included with
602 INCLUDE or INSERT. The default is to accept the system locale
603 encoding, UTF-8, UTF-16, or UTF-32, automatically detecting which
604 one the system file uses.
606 See the documentation for the INSERT command in the PSPP manual for
609 * Text data files that PRINT and WRITE creates now use the system
610 native line ends by default (CRLF on Windows, LF only elsewhere).
611 Use the new ENDS subcommand on FILE HANDLE to override the default.
613 * A new Perl module allows Perl programs to read and write PSPP
616 * A tutorial chapter has been added to the user manual.
618 Changes from 0.6.1 to 0.6.2:
622 - Dutch, thanks to Harry Thijssen.
624 - Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Michel Boaventura.
626 Thanks for translations are also due to the coordinators at
627 translationproject.org.
629 * Statistical bug fixes:
631 - REGRESSION: Report correct standard error of the estimate (bug
634 - T-TEST: Report correct significance of paired sample T-test in
635 the common case (bug #26936) and corner cases. Thanks to Mike
636 Griffiths and Matej Cepl for reporting these bugs.
638 * Build fixes and changes:
640 - Fix build with GTK+ 2.17.4 and later.
642 - Make running "make" after running "configure" with different
643 settings reliably rebuild version.c.
645 - Cygwin and MinGW build fixes.
647 - Fixes for building with recent gnulib.
649 - The Makefile now honors two new variables, PSPP_LDFLAGS and
650 PSPPIRE_LDFLAGS, that affect linking of the PSPP and PSPPIRE
651 binaries, respectively. This makes building easier for some
654 - Fixes for "configure --enable-relocatable" (bug #25508).
656 * Data file bug fixes and changes:
658 - Fix reading text data files that contain a mix of white space
659 and commas. Now "a ,b" is treated as two fields containing "a"
660 and "b"; previously it was treated as three, with an empty field
663 - Fix writing corrupted .sav files on Windows.
665 - Fix writing variable labels longer than 252 bytes to save files.
666 Thanks to Robert Westlund for reporting this bug.
668 - Fix writing corrupted .por files (bug #26034).
670 - Fix reading .por files whose initial lines are not padded out
671 with spaces as expected.
673 - PSPP will no longer issue warnings about some .sav file records
674 or values that it does not understand. These warnings were
675 harmless, but needlessly alarmed some users.
677 - Fix crash reading empty string fields from PostgreSQL databases.
679 * Bug fixes that affect PSPP and PSPPIRE:
681 - Users may now control precision of output statistics. Instead
682 of hard coding the width and decimals of output numbers, respect
683 the default format in most instances. Counts are now normally
684 displayed with the format of the weight variable, if any.
686 - Fix crash when an INSERT command specifies the name of a file
687 that does not exist (bug #24569).
689 - Fix crash when CROSSTABS specifies a long-string variable (bugs
692 - Fix crash drawing pie charts with many segments.
694 - Fix crash when NUMERIC specifies an invalid format.
696 * PSPPIRE bug fixes and changes:
698 - On Windows, write the output file to the user's home directory
699 instead of the current directory, to better match user
702 - Some data editor fixes.
706 - Fix typo in BINOMIAL section of user manual (bug #25892).
708 Changes from 0.6.0 to 0.6.1:
710 * Statistical bug fixes:
712 - Report correct standardized regression coefficients in linear
713 regression output (bug #23567).
715 * Bug fixes that affect PSPP and PSPPIRE:
717 - Avoid crash with pie charts (bug #24014).
719 - Don't append % to count totals (bug #24003).
721 - Don't crash on bad input (bug #24031).
723 - Don't crash if "end data." is not left aligned (bug #24115).
725 - Change default workspace value to 64 MB, to avoid unnecessary
726 disk accesses on modern machines.
730 - Add ".sav" or ".por" suffix to filename when saving with Save_As
733 - Make it possible to reopen the output window on Windows (bug
736 - A POSIX regular expression library is now included and used
737 automatically if the host does not have one or has one that is
740 * Build fixes and changes:
742 - Work around bug in GSL that prevented build with recent GCC
743 versions without manually adding -fgnu89-inline to CFLAGS.
745 - Also warn about missing prerequisites as we encounter them (bug
748 - Distribute necessary files to allow users working from the
749 distributed tarball to configure with --enable-gui-tools.
751 - Append $(EXEEXT_FOR_BUILD) to output file name when building
752 q2c, fixing build problems on Windows.
754 - GSL 1.8 or later is now required.
756 - Build errors with --enable-relocatable were fixed.
758 * The German translations were removed, since native German speakers
759 found them too poor to be useful.
761 Changes from 0.4.0 to 0.6.0:
763 * The PSPP license is now version 3 or later of the GNU General
764 Public License. Previously, it was version 2 or later.
766 * PSPP now has a graphical interface, called PSPPIRE. This
767 interface allows you to enter data and variable definitions
768 interactively. Commands may be executed in syntax form, or by
769 using the interactive dialog boxes available from the dropdown
772 * A few sample syntax files are now included in the `examples'
775 * Numerous major and minor bugs have been fixed.
779 * The INSTALL file now reflects the details of how to install
780 PSPP. It is a tailored version of the generic installation
781 instructions, instead of a verbatim copy.
783 * iconv, which is ordinarily installed as part of a Unix-like
784 system, is now required. If you don't have it already, you can
785 install GNU libiconv (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/).
787 * libxml2 and zlib are new optional dependencies. They are
788 required to use PSPP's support for reading Gnumeric files.
790 Statistical procedure changes:
792 * REGRESSION is a new procedure for fitting linear models to data
793 via least-squares estimation.
795 * NPAR TESTS is a new procedure for non-parametric tests. In this
796 release, it supports binomial and chi-square tests.
798 * RANK is a new procedure to rank variables. It supports numerous
801 * FREQUENCIES can now output histograms and pie charts. These
802 features were present in earlier releases, but not documented.
804 User interface changes:
806 * In many situations where PSPP once terminated with a fatal
807 error, PSPP now recovers and continues execution.
809 * PSPP is now able to start up and run even if it cannot find its
812 * Journaling of interactive commands to a disk file is now
813 implemented. By default, journaling is enabled, to a file named
814 `pspp.jnl' in the current directory. SET JOURNAL may be used to
817 * The use of `+' between syntax file names on the command line to
818 prevent the dictionary from being cleared between their
819 executions is no longer supported. All syntax files are now
820 executed as if `+' had been specified.
822 * The -d/--define and -u/--undef command line options are no
823 longer supported. Instead, use /usr/bin/env or shell primitives
824 to define or clear environment variables before invoking PSPP.
826 * If a syntax file named named `rc' is found in a configuration
827 directory (such as $HOME/.pspp), it is executed before any
828 syntax file specified on the command line. The -r or
829 --no-statrc command line option may be used to disable this
834 * Output configuration options have changed. Please refer to the
835 manual for a full description of the available options.
837 In consequence, you will need to reinstall your "devices" file.
838 "make install" will do this for you.
840 * Most error messages are now written to PSPP output files by
841 default. SET ERROR can be used to disable this behavior.
843 * When invoked interactively, PSPP now by default produces output
844 on the terminal, piping it through the "more" program.
845 Previously, by default output was written only to file
846 pspp.list. On most terminals, the page length used for output
847 automatically adapts to the terminal size, even if the terminal
852 - This driver now supports charts in output. Charts are written
853 as separate files that the main output file refers to. By
854 default, charts are written in PNG format to files named
855 pspp-1.png, pspp-2.png, and so on.
857 - Configurations are provided that use VT100 (and xterm)
858 line-drawing characters in tables. The option "-o list-vt100"
859 requests use of this device for output to pspp.list.
863 - The default paper size is now determined using the PAPERSIZE
864 environment variable, or the LC_PAPER locale category on
865 systems that support it. If these are not set, the default is
866 now A4, instead of US letter. To make US letter the default,
867 set PAPERSIZE to "letter" in your environment.
869 - Font metrics are now read from AFM files, instead of
870 Groff-format metrics files. PostScript fonts can now be
873 In consequence, you will need to install an AFM file for each
874 font used in PostScript output. "make install" will install
875 AFM files for the standard PostScript fonts, including the
876 ones that the PostScript driver uses by default.
878 - Standard paper sizes no longer need to be specified through a
879 configuration file. The "papersize" configuration file is no
880 longer needed, or supported.
882 - The PostScript prologue is no longer obtained from the
883 "ps-prologue" configuration file. This configuration file is
884 no longer needed, or supported.
888 - The HTML prologue is no longer obtained from the
889 "html-prologue" configuration file. This configuration file
890 is no longer needed, or supported.
892 Command language changes:
894 * The following commands are new:
896 - GET DATA, which currently supports reading Gnumeric files and
897 text data files. It will be extended later to read other
898 types of foreign data.
900 - CD, to change the current directory.
902 - INSERT, to execute a syntax file.
904 - DELETE VARIABLES, to remove variables from the active file
907 - ADD DOCUMENT, to add text to active file documents.
909 - CLOSE FILE HANDLE (a PSPP extension; see below).
911 - XEXPORT, a PSPP extension that is a transformation equivalent
914 * The following functions for transformation expressions are new:
916 - DATEDIFF, for computing the difference of two dates.
918 - DATESUM, for advancing a date by a specified duration.
920 - VALUELABEL, to obtain the value label for a value.
922 * PSPP now supports very long string variables (over 255 bytes
925 * MATCH FILES now supports the FIRST and LAST subcommands.
927 * Previous versions of PSPP prohibited using commands to both read and
928 write a single file at the same time. Now, PSPP allows this, and
929 the new version of the file atomically replaces the old version.
931 * The following commands are no longer available. They will be
932 re-implemented in a later release:
934 - CLEAR TRANSFORMATIONS
940 * The PROCESS IF command, which was deprecated, has been removed.
941 You may replace any usage of it by SELECT IF following
942 TEMPORARY, which has the same effect.
944 * The output format for variables created by VECTOR may now be
945 specified as part of the VECTOR syntax.
947 "Scratch files", a new PSPP extension:
949 A scratch file, like a system file, consists of a dictionary and
950 any number of cases. Small scratch files are stored in memory;
951 one that grows too large is written to disk. By default, any file
952 handle whose name begins with # is assumed to refer to a scratch
955 Scratch files can be used just about anywhere a system or portable
956 file can be used. Also, portable files are now allowed in most
957 places that system files were allowed in previous PSPP version.
959 A new CLOSE FILE HANDLE command allows the storage associated with
960 scratch files to be freed. It also allows file handles to be
961 reassigned to new files.
963 For more information on scratch files, refer to the "File Handles"
964 section in the PSPP manual. For specifics of what commands now
965 allow what kinds of files to be specified, refer to the
966 documentation on those particular commands.
970 * Binary formats and IBM/360 formats, including ASCII/EBCDIC
971 translation, are now supported. Use FILE HANDLE to specify the
972 format of these files.
974 * Little-endian, big-endian, and VAX-endian formats are now
975 supported for integer binary formats when reading and writing
976 data files. The new RIB and WIB subcommands on the SET command
977 control endianness of integer data. The default is the host's
980 * IEEE 754, VAX, and IBM hexadecimal formats are now supported for
981 floating point binary formats when reading and writing data
982 files. The new RRB and WRB subcommands on the SET command
983 control the floating point format. The default is the host's
984 native floating point format.
986 * DATA LIST now supports the SKIP subcommand, to skip records at
987 the beginning of a file. For compatibility, DATA LIST now
988 treats N format as F format for FREE and LIST format input.
990 * The SAVE and XSAVE commands now support the UNSELECTED,
991 PERMISSIONS, NAMES, and MAP subcommands.
993 * The EXPORT command has been re-implemented to obtain better
994 results. Support for the UNSELECTED, DIGITS, and TYPE
995 subcommands has been added.
997 * For compatibility, PRINT now inserts a space at the beginning of
998 every output line, even lines that would otherwise be blank,
999 when OUTFILE is specified. (The behavior of WRITE is
1002 * For compatibility, PRINT EJECT now inserts the digit `1' at the
1003 beginning of each line that should begin a new page.
1005 * For compatibility, WRITE now outputs the system-missing value as
1006 a field filled with spaces. Binary formats are an exception.
1007 (The behavior of PRINT is unchanged.)
1011 * Input and output format descriptions have been rewritten. They
1012 now precisely describe what is accepted on input and written on
1015 * The descriptions of the PSPP system and portable file formats
1016 have been extensively revised and improved.
1018 For developers, the build system now requires Autoconf 2.60 and
1021 Changes from 0.3.0 to 0.4.0:
1023 Changes in build dependencies:
1025 * The GNU Scientific Library (libgsl), version 1.6 or later, is
1028 * libplot from GNU plotutils is optional. Without it, the new
1029 graphing features will not work. If you do not have it
1030 installed, you must run `configure' with --without-libplot.
1032 * libgmp2 is no longer a dependency.
1034 Newly implemented commands and statistical features:
1036 * EXAMINE, including its graphing features.
1038 * FREQUENCIES now supports percentiles.
1046 * SORT CASES now sorts stably, that is, two cases with equal sort
1047 criteria will be in the same relative order before and after the
1050 * T-TEST (re-written).
1052 * DATE and USE. These commands are parsed but otherwise ignored,
1053 to enhance compatibility with certain command files that invoke
1056 * VARIABLE WIDTH, VARIABLE ALIGNMENT, and VARIABLE LEVEL. These
1057 currently have no effect on PSPP output, but their values are
1058 written to and read from system files and thus may affect
1059 third-party software.
1061 * SET EPOCH implemented.
1063 * DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST now support arbitrary field
1066 * FILE HANDLE now supports custom tab widths.
1068 Long variable names (and other identifiers) are now supported. Up
1069 to the first 64 bytes of each identifier is significant. PSPP now
1070 reads and writes system files compatible with SPSS version 12.
1072 New --algorithm and --syntax command line options allow
1073 SPSS-compatible or enhanced modes to be selected.
1075 Support for transformation expressions has been rewritten and
1076 significantly improved. Refer to the manual for details.
1078 Calculation of moments (mean, standard deviation, kurtosis,
1079 skewness) has been rewritten and should now be more accurate. In
1080 --algorithm=enhanced mode moments may be more accurate than SPSS in
1083 Numerous bugs have been fixed, too many to mention here. Many new
1084 tests have been added, leading to the discovery and fixing of many
1087 The ASCII output driver can now squeeze multiple blank lines into
1090 Much of the code has been rewritten and refactored. It is now much
1093 The FILE TYPE and REPEATING DATA commands have been disabled for
1094 this release because their implementations were deemed too buggy to
1095 be useful. They will be fixed and replaced in a future release.
1097 New pspp-mode for Emacs (in pspp-mode.el).
1099 Added rudimentary command-line completion for interactive input.
1101 lib/julcal and lib/dcdflib are no longer used, so they have been
1104 For developers, the build system now requires Autoconf 2.58 and
1105 Automake 1.7. The included gettext has been updated to version
1108 Some reports state that Texinfo 4.8, the latest version, may be
1109 necessary to successfully format the documentation on some systems.
1111 Version 0.3.0 changes since 0.2.3:
1115 * Using alphanumeric variables in functions under AGGREGATE
1118 * Under certain circumstances, the final case would be omitted
1119 from the results of an AGGREGATE operation. Fixed.
1121 * Undefined behavior was invoked by referencing a freed pointer
1122 under certain circumstances. Fixed.
1124 * A wrong record size was displayed when paging the active file to
1127 * Not having enough temporary space for sorting caused a core
1130 * Syntax errors in function descriptions on AGGREGATE caused core
1133 * A null pointer was dereferenced, causing a core dump, when
1134 PERCENTILES was specified on FREQUENCIES. This fixes the
1135 problem, but PSPP still doesn't calculate percentiles.
1137 * SORT always sorted in ascending order. Fixed.
1139 * Some minor memory leaks in the expression parser were removed.
1141 * Many assertions fixed for strict ANSI C compliance.
1145 * SET ECHO ON now implemented, but turned off by default.
1147 * PRINT specifier supported on END REPEAT.
1151 * System libgmp2 library is used if installed instead of
1152 unconditionally using the included libgmp2 subset.
1154 * Extensive code cleanup, which continues.
1156 * Added CORRELATIONS command parser, but not implemented.
1158 Version 0.2.3 changes since 0.2.2:
1162 * SPLIT FILE with a string variable caused a core dump. Fixed.
1164 * Nested INCLUDEs didn't work. Fixed.
1166 * The MATCH FILES procedure set the values of variables not present
1167 to 0. It should have been SYSMIS. This is now fixed.
1169 * The REMARK command was too aggressive about skipping lines. It
1170 didn't like being the last command in a file.
1172 * Comment parsing wasn't consistent with the rest of the code in its
1173 idea of where one command ends and another starts. This meant
1174 that sometimes commands would be mysteriously ignored. Thanks to
1175 Dr. Dirk Melcher <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1177 * The TABLE subcommand on MATCH FILES worked only erratically at
1178 best. This fixes it. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1179 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1181 * VARIABLE LABELS rejected a slash before the first variable
1182 specification, contradicting the documentation. Thanks to Walter
1183 M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for reporting this bug.
1185 * Because of an incorrect optimization in memory allocation,
1186 CROSSTABS sometimes segfaulted when asked to output multiple
1187 tables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
1190 * CROSSTABS didn't display value labels for column and row
1191 variables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
1194 * WRITE didn't write line ends. Fixed. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1195 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1197 * The TABLE subcommand on MATCH FILES worked only erratically at
1198 best. This fixes it. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1199 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1201 * VARIABLE LABELS rejected a slash before the first variable
1202 specification, contradicting the documentation. Thanks to Walter
1203 M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for reporting this bug.
1205 * Because of an incorrect optimization in memory allocation,
1206 CROSSTABS sometimes segfaulted when asked to output multiple
1207 tables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
1210 * CROSSTABS didn't display value labels for column and row
1211 variables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
1214 * WRITE didn't write line ends. Fixed. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1215 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1217 * MATCH FILES corrupted memory and dumped core on some syntax
1220 * MATCH FILES should set numeric values not available to the
1221 system-missing value, not to 0. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1222 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1224 * KEEP didn't work properly on the SAVE procedure. Fixed. Thanks
1225 to Ralf Geschke <ralf@kuerbis.org> for reporting this bug.
1229 * Some systems didn't like the way open_file was coded. Thanks to
1230 Hankin <hankin@rogue.consultco.com> for pointing this out.
1232 * The SAVE procedure didn't save long string variables properly.
1233 Fixed by this patch. Thanks to Hankin
1234 <hankin@rogue.consultco.com> for this patch.
1236 * Minor documentation fixes for MATCH FILES.
1238 Version 0.2.2 changes since 0.2.1:
1242 * Fix behavior of PRINT SPACE for negative arguments.
1244 * Fix reading some unusual system files.
1246 * Fix LIST problems with very long variables. Thanks to Hankin
1247 <hankin@dunno.com> for this bug report.
1249 * Fix problems with some string format specifiers.
1251 * Fix use of $CASENUM in expressions. Thanks to Dirk Melcher
1252 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1254 * Additional DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST fixes. Thanks to
1255 Hankin <hankin@dunno.com> again on this one.
1257 * Sometimes you may encounter a PSPP script that has to be
1258 interpreted in interactive mode. Now you can use the -i flag to
1261 * Warnings for egcs 1.1.1 cleaned up. (However you'll get lots of
1262 `unused variable' warnings under gcc 2.7.2.3, fixing this will
1267 * The files in gmp need the internationalization directory in
1268 their include path. Thanks to OKUJI Yoshinori
1269 <okuji@kuicr.kyoto-u.ac.jp> for pointing this out.
1271 Version 0.2.1 changes since 0.2.0:
1275 * Remember to include examples/ directory in distribution :-)
1277 * Fixed gmp compile problems for some non-i386 architectures.
1278 Thanks to Hans Olav Eggestad <olav@jordforsk.nlh.no> and others
1281 * DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST parsing of input files is now
1282 matches the documented behavior exactly, and error messages are
1283 more helpful. Thanks to Mark H. Wood <mwood@IUPUI.Edu>.
1285 Version 0.2.0 changes since 0.1.0:
1287 Procedures now implemented:
1288 * CROSSTABS. Please see documentation for caveats.
1290 Transformations and utilities now implemented:
1293 * CLEAR TRANSFORMATIONS
1294 * DISPLAY (all subcommands).
1305 Support for input and output through pipes: "|command" and
1306 "command|" filenames; support for special filenames "-", "stdin",
1309 New command-line features:
1310 * New option --testing-mode: Invoke heuristics to assist testing.
1311 * New option --safer, -s: Don't allow certain unsafe operations.
1312 * New option --command=CMD, -c CMD: Perform literal command CMD.
1313 * rc file ~/.pspp/rc is executed before any other files.
1314 * Now multiple syntax files can be specified.
1316 Operator LAG is now implemented.
1318 Added missing FILE subcommand to REREAD.
1320 Table output manager completely rewritten.
1322 Device configuration file syntax changed. You will need to
1323 reinstall your `devices' file.
1325 New output driver for HTML.
1327 PostScript driver and prologue simplified.
1329 Many bugs fixed. General source-code cleanup.
1331 Added Texinfo documentation for:
1332 * PSPP system file format
1333 * PSPP portable file format
1334 * How to write input for q2c parser generator
1337 PSPP language is now fully documented. Please report any
1338 inaccuracies or omissions in the documentation.
1340 Changes for version 0.1.0:
1342 First public release. For changes from unreleased development
1343 versions, please see ONEWS.
1345 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
1346 Copyright information:
1348 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
1349 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
1350 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
1351 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
1353 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
1354 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
1355 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last
1359 version-control: never