PSPP is a program for statistical analysis of sampled data. It
interprets commands in the SPSS language and produces tabular output
-in ASCII or PostScript format.
+in ASCII, PostScript, or HTML format.
PSPP development is ongoing. It already supports a large subset of
SPSS's transformation language. Its statistical procedure support is
currently limited, but growing.
-Source code for the latest development release of PSPP is available at
-ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/pspp
-
For information on differences from previous versions, please see file
-NEWS. Full documentation on PSPP's language and information on known
-bugs can in the doc/ directory.
+NEWS. Full documentation on PSPP's language can be found in the doc/
+directory.
-Questions and comments regarding PSPP can be sent to Ben Pfaff
-<blp@gnu.org>. PSPP bug reports should be sent to
-bug-gnu-pspp@gnu.org.
+Source code for the latest release of PSPP is available at
+ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/pspp/. Older versions may be obtained from
+ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/pspp/. Development sources are available from
+CVS at http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/pspp
+
+Questions and comments regarding PSPP can be sent to pspp-dev@gnu.org.
+PSPP bug reports may be sent to bug-gnu-pspp@gnu.org or filed in the
+bug-tracking system at http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=pspp
+according to your preference.
+
+The long term goals for PSPP are ambitious. We wish to provide the
+following support to users:
+
+ * All of the SPSS transformation language. PSPP already
+ supports a large subset of it.
+
+ * All the statistical procedures that someone is willing to
+ implement, whether they exist in SPSS or not. Currently,
+ statistical support is limited, but growing.
+
+ * Compatibility with SPSS syntax, including compatibility with
+ known bugs and warts, where it makes sense. We also provide
+ an "enhanced" mode in certain cases where PSPP can output
+ better results that may surprise SPSS users.
+
+ * Friendly textual and graphical interfaces. PSPP does not do
+ a good job of this yet.
+
+ * Attractive output, including graphs, in a variety of human-
+ and machine-readable formats. PSPP currently produces
+ output in ASCII, PostScript, and HTML formats. We will
+ enhance PSPP's output formatting in the future.
+
+ * Good documentation. Currently the PSPP manual describes its
+ language completely, but we would like to add information on
+ how to select statistical procedures and interpret their
+ results.
+
+ * Efficient support for very large data sets. For procedures
+ where it is practical, we wish to efficiently support data
+ sets many times larger than physical memory. The framework
+ for this feature is already in place, but it has not been
+ tuned or extensively tested.
+
+Over the long term, we also wish to provide support to developers who
+wish to extend PSPP with new statistical procedures, by supplying the
+following:
+
+ * Easy-to-use support for parsing language syntax. Currently,
+ parsing is done by writing "recursive descent" code by hand,
+ with some support for automated parsing of the most common
+ constructs. We wish to improve the situation by supplying a
+ more complete and flexible parser generator.
+
+ * Easy-to-use support for producing attractive output.
+ Currently, output is done by writing code to explicitly fill
+ in table cells with data. We should be able to supply a
+ more convenient interface that also allows for providing
+ machine-readable output.
+
+ * Eventually, a plug-in interface for procedures. Over the
+ short term, the interface between the PSPP core and
+ statistical procedures is evolving quickly enough that a
+ plug-in model does not make sense. Over the long term, it
+ may make sense to introduce plug-ins.
projects / pspp-builds.git / blobdiff