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.
+Instructions for installation are in INSTALL. Before you install
+PSPP, you will need to install certain prerequisites:
+
+ * An ANSI C compiler and tool chain.
+
+ * GNU make. Other make programs will not work.
+
+ * The GNU Scientific Library (libgsl), version 1.6 or later,
+ including libgslcblas included with GSL.
+
+ * Perl, version 5.005_03 or later. (Perl is required during build
+ but not after installation.)
+
+ * pkg-config (only if you need to regenerate configure after
+ modifying configure.ac).
+
+ * Optional: libncurses. Without it, PSPP will assume it is
+ running in an 80x25 terminal.
+
+ * Optional: libreadline and libhistory. Without them, interactive
+ command editing and history features will be disabled.
+
+ * Optional: libplot (from GNU plotutils). Without it,
+ graphing features will not work. If you do not have it
+ installed, you must run `configure' with --without-libplot.
+
+ * Optional: GTK+ version 2.6.0 or later, plus libglade 2.0 or
+ later. Without them, the GUI will not be built. If you do not
+ have these installed, you must run `configure' with
+ --without-gui.
+
For information on differences from previous versions, please see file
NEWS. Full documentation on PSPP's language can be found in the doc/
directory.
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.
+Questions and comments about using PSPP may be sent to pspp-users@gnu.org.
+Bug reports may be filed at http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=pspp
+or emailed to bug-gnu-pspp@gnu.org. (We prefer the web-based system
+because it makes it more difficult for us to lose track of bugs.)
+
+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