Release PSPP 0.6.2-rc1.

[pspp] / NEWS

PSPP NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
Time-stamp: <2009-10-06 20:46:21 blp>
Copyright (C) 1996-9, 2000, 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end for copying conditions.

Please send PSPP bug reports to bug-gnu-pspp@gnu.org.

Changes from 0.6.1 to 0.6.2-rc1:

  * New translations:

    - Dutch, thanks to Harry Thijssen.

    - Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Michel Boaventura.

    Thanks for translations are also due to the coordinators at
    translationproject.org.

  * Statistical bug fixes:

    - REGRESSION: Report correct standard error of the estimate (bug
      #25677).

    - T-TEST: Report correct significance of paired sample T-test in
      the common case (bug #26936) and corner cases.  Thanks to Mike
      Griffiths and Matej Cepl for reporting these bugs.

  * Build fixes and changes:

    - Fix build with GTK+ 2.17.4 and later.

    - Make running "make" after running "configure" with different
      settings reliably rebuild version.c.

    - Cygwin and MinGW build fixes.

    - Fixes for building with recent gnulib.

    - The Makefile now honors two new variables, PSPP_LDFLAGS and
      PSPPIRE_LDFLAGS, that affect linking of the PSPP and PSPPIRE
      binaries, respectively.  This makes building easier for some
      packagers.

    - Fixes for "configure --enable-relocatable" (bug #25508).

  * Data file bug fixes and changes:

    - Fix reading text data files that contain a mix of white space
      and commas.  Now "a ,b" is treated as two fields containing "a"
      and "b"; previously it was treated as three, with an empty field
      in the middle.

    - Fix writing corrupted .sav files on Windows.

    - Fix writing variable labels longer than 252 bytes to save files.
      Thanks to Robert Westlund for reporting this bug.

    - Fix writing corrupted .por files (bug #26034).

    - Fix reading .por files whose initial lines are not padded out
      with spaces as expected.

    - PSPP will no longer issue warnings about some .sav file records
      or values that it does not understand.  These warnings were
      harmless, but needlessly alarmed some users.

    - Fix crash reading empty string fields from PostgreSQL databases.

  * Bug fixes that affect PSPP and PSPPIRE:

    - Users may now control precision of output statistics.  Instead
      of hard coding the width and decimals of output numbers, respect
      the default format in most instances.  Counts are now normally
      displayed with the format of the weight variable, if any.

    - Fix crash when an INSERT command specifies the name of a file
      that does not exist (bug #24569).

    - Fix crash when CROSSTABS specifies a long-string variable (bugs
      #24557 and #26131).

    - Fix crash drawing pie charts with many segments.

    - Fix crash when NUMERIC specifies an invalid format.

  * PSPPIRE bug fixes and changes:

    - On Windows, write the output file to the user's home directory
      instead of the current directory, to better match user
      expectations.

    - Some data editor fixes.

  * Documentation:

    - Fix typo in BINOMIAL section of user manual (bug #25892).

Changes from 0.6.0 to 0.6.1:

  * Statistical bug fixes:

    - Report correct standardized regression coefficients in linear
      regression output (bug #23567).

  * Bug fixes that affect PSPP and PSPPIRE:

    - Avoid crash with pie charts (bug #24014).

    - Don't append % to count totals (bug #24003).

    - Don't crash on bad input (bug #24031).

    - Don't crash if "end data." is not left aligned (bug #24115).

    - Change default workspace value to 64 MB, to avoid unnecessary
      disk accesses on modern machines.

  * PSPPIRE bug fixes:

    - Add ".sav" or ".por" suffix to filename when saving with Save_As
      (bug #23137).

    - Make it possible to reopen the output window on Windows (bug
      #24033).

    - A POSIX regular expression library is now included and used
      automatically if the host does not have one or has one that is
      inadequate.

  * Build fixes and changes:

    - Work around bug in GSL that prevented build with recent GCC
      versions without manually adding -fgnu89-inline to CFLAGS.

    - Also warn about missing prerequisites as we encounter them (bug
      #24445).

    - Distribute necessary files to allow users working from the
      distributed tarball to configure with --enable-gui-tools.

    - Append $(EXEEXT_FOR_BUILD) to output file name when building
      q2c, fixing build problems on Windows.

    - GSL 1.8 or later is now required.

    - Build errors with --enable-relocatable were fixed.

  * The German translations were removed, since native German speakers
    found them too poor to be useful.

Changes from 0.4.0 to 0.6.0:

  * The PSPP license is now version 3 or later of the GNU General
    Public License.  Previously, it was version 2 or later.

  * PSPP now has a graphical interface, called PSPPIRE.  This
    interface allows you to enter data and variable definitions
    interactively.  Commands may be executed in syntax form, or by
    using the interactive dialog boxes available from the dropdown
    menus.

  * A few sample syntax files are now included in the `examples'
    directory.

  * Numerous major and minor bugs have been fixed.

  Build changes:

    * The INSTALL file now reflects the details of how to install
      PSPP.  It is a tailored version of the generic installation
      instructions, instead of a verbatim copy.

    * iconv, which is ordinarily installed as part of a Unix-like
      system, is now required.  If you don't have it already, you can
      install GNU libiconv (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/).

    * libxml2 and zlib are new optional dependencies.  They are
      required to use PSPP's support for reading Gnumeric files.

  Statistical procedure changes:

    * REGRESSION is a new procedure for fitting linear models to data
      via least-squares estimation.

    * NPAR TESTS is a new procedure for non-parametric tests.  In this
      release, it supports binomial and chi-square tests.

    * RANK is a new procedure to rank variables.  It supports numerous
      forms of ranking.

    * FREQUENCIES can now output histograms and pie charts.  These
      features were present in earlier releases, but not documented.

  User interface changes:

    * In many situations where PSPP once terminated with a fatal
      error, PSPP now recovers and continues execution.

    * PSPP is now able to start up and run even if it cannot find its
      configuration files.

    * Journaling of interactive commands to a disk file is now
      implemented.  By default, journaling is enabled, to a file named
      `pspp.jnl' in the current directory.  SET JOURNAL may be used to
      control journaling.

    * The use of `+' between syntax file names on the command line to
      prevent the dictionary from being cleared between their
      executions is no longer supported.  All syntax files are now
      executed as if `+' had been specified.

    * The -d/--define and -u/--undef command line options are no
      longer supported.  Instead, use /usr/bin/env or shell primitives
      to define or clear environment variables before invoking PSPP.

    * If a syntax file named named `rc' is found in a configuration
      directory (such as $HOME/.pspp), it is executed before any
      syntax file specified on the command line.  The -r or
      --no-statrc command line option may be used to disable this
      behavior.

  Output changes:

    * Output configuration options have changed.  Please refer to the
      manual for a full description of the available options.

      In consequence, you will need to reinstall your "devices" file.
      "make install" will do this for you.

    * Most error messages are now written to PSPP output files by
      default.  SET ERROR can be used to disable this behavior.

    * When invoked interactively, PSPP now by default produces output
      on the terminal, piping it through the "more" program.
      Previously, by default output was written only to file
      pspp.list.  On most terminals, the page length used for output
      automatically adapts to the terminal size, even if the terminal
      is resized.

    * ASCII driver:

      - This driver now supports charts in output.  Charts are written
        as separate files that the main output file refers to.  By
        default, charts are written in PNG format to files named
        pspp-1.png, pspp-2.png, and so on.

      - Configurations are provided that use VT100 (and xterm)
        line-drawing characters in tables.  The option "-o list-vt100"
        requests use of this device for output to pspp.list.

    * PostScript driver:

      - The default paper size is now determined using the PAPERSIZE
        environment variable, or the LC_PAPER locale category on
        systems that support it.  If these are not set, the default is
        now A4, instead of US letter.  To make US letter the default,
        set PAPERSIZE to "letter" in your environment.

      - Font metrics are now read from AFM files, instead of
        Groff-format metrics files.  PostScript fonts can now be
        embedded in output.

        In consequence, you will need to install an AFM file for each
        font used in PostScript output.  "make install" will install
        AFM files for the standard PostScript fonts, including the
        ones that the PostScript driver uses by default.

      - Standard paper sizes no longer need to be specified through a
        configuration file.  The "papersize" configuration file is no
        longer needed, or supported.

      - The PostScript prologue is no longer obtained from the
        "ps-prologue" configuration file.  This configuration file is
        no longer needed, or supported.

    * HTML driver:

      - The HTML prologue is no longer obtained from the
        "html-prologue" configuration file.  This configuration file
        is no longer needed, or supported.

  Command language changes:

    * The following commands are new:

      - GET DATA, which currently supports reading Gnumeric files and
        text data files.  It will be extended later to read other
        types of foreign data.

      - CD, to change the current directory.

      - INSERT, to execute a syntax file.

      - DELETE VARIABLES, to remove variables from the active file
        dictionary.

      - ADD DOCUMENT, to add text to active file documents.

      - CLOSE FILE HANDLE (a PSPP extension; see below).

      - XEXPORT, a PSPP extension that is a transformation equivalent
        to EXPORT.

    * The following functions for transformation expressions are new:

      - DATEDIFF, for computing the difference of two dates.

      - DATESUM, for advancing a date by a specified duration.

      - VALUELABEL, to obtain the value label for a value.

    * PSPP now supports very long string variables (over 255 bytes
      long).

    * MATCH FILES now supports the FIRST and LAST subcommands.

    * Previous versions of PSPP prohibited using commands to both read and
      write a single file at the same time.  Now, PSPP allows this, and
      the new version of the file atomically replaces the old version.

    * The following commands are no longer available.  They will be
      re-implemented in a later release:

      - CLEAR TRANSFORMATIONS

      - MATRIX DATA

      - REPEATING DATA

    * The PROCESS IF command, which was deprecated, has been removed.
      You may replace any usage of it by SELECT IF following
      TEMPORARY, which has the same effect.

    * The output format for variables created by VECTOR may now be
      specified as part of the VECTOR syntax.

  "Scratch files", a new PSPP extension:

    A scratch file, like a system file, consists of a dictionary and
    any number of cases.  Small scratch files are stored in memory;
    one that grows too large is written to disk.  By default, any file
    handle whose name begins with # is assumed to refer to a scratch
    file.

    Scratch files can be used just about anywhere a system or portable
    file can be used.  Also, portable files are now allowed in most
    places that system files were allowed in previous PSPP version.

    A new CLOSE FILE HANDLE command allows the storage associated with
    scratch files to be freed.  It also allows file handles to be
    reassigned to new files.

    For more information on scratch files, refer to the "File Handles"
    section in the PSPP manual.  For specifics of what commands now
    allow what kinds of files to be specified, refer to the
    documentation on those particular commands.

  Data access changes:

    * Binary formats and IBM/360 formats, including ASCII/EBCDIC
      translation, are now supported.  Use FILE HANDLE to specify the
      format of these files.

    * Little-endian, big-endian, and VAX-endian formats are now
      supported for integer binary formats when reading and writing
      data files.  The new RIB and WIB subcommands on the SET command
      control endianness of integer data.  The default is the host's
      native endianness.

    * IEEE 754, VAX, and IBM hexadecimal formats are now supported for
      floating point binary formats when reading and writing data
      files.  The new RRB and WRB subcommands on the SET command
      control the floating point format.  The default is the host's
      native floating point format.

    * DATA LIST now supports the SKIP subcommand, to skip records at
      the beginning of a file.  For compatibility, DATA LIST now
      treats N format as F format for FREE and LIST format input.

    * The SAVE and XSAVE commands now support the UNSELECTED,
      PERMISSIONS, NAMES, and MAP subcommands.

    * The EXPORT command has been re-implemented to obtain better
      results.  Support for the UNSELECTED, DIGITS, and TYPE
      subcommands has been added.

    * For compatibility, PRINT now inserts a space at the beginning of
      every output line, even lines that would otherwise be blank,
      when OUTFILE is specified.  (The behavior of WRITE is
      unchanged.)

    * For compatibility, PRINT EJECT now inserts the digit `1' at the
      beginning of each line that should begin a new page.

    * For compatibility, WRITE now outputs the system-missing value as
      a field filled with spaces.  Binary formats are an exception.
      (The behavior of PRINT is unchanged.)

  Documentation:

    * Input and output format descriptions have been rewritten.  They
      now precisely describe what is accepted on input and written on
      output.

    * The descriptions of the PSPP system and portable file formats
      have been extensively revised and improved.

  For developers, the build system now requires Autoconf 2.60 and
  Automake 1.10.
\f
Changes from 0.3.0 to 0.4.0:

  Changes in build dependencies:

    * The GNU Scientific Library (libgsl), version 1.6 or later, is
      now required.

    * libplot from GNU plotutils is optional.  Without it, the new
      graphing features will not work.  If you do not have it
      installed, you must run `configure' with --without-libplot.

    * libgmp2 is no longer a dependency.

  Newly implemented commands and statistical features:

    * EXAMINE, including its graphing features.

    * FREQUENCIES now supports percentiles.

    * ONEWAY.

    * PERMISSIONS.

    * SHOW.

    * SORT CASES now sorts stably, that is, two cases with equal sort
      criteria will be in the same relative order before and after the
      sort.

    * T-TEST (re-written).

    * DATE and USE.  These commands are parsed but otherwise ignored,
      to enhance compatibility with certain command files that invoke
      them unnecessarily.

    * VARIABLE WIDTH, VARIABLE ALIGNMENT, and VARIABLE LEVEL.  These
      currently have no effect on PSPP output, but their values are
      written to and read from system files and thus may affect
      third-party software.

    * SET EPOCH implemented.

    * DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST now support arbitrary field
      delimiters.

    * FILE HANDLE now supports custom tab widths.

  Long variable names (and other identifiers) are now supported.  Up
  to the first 64 bytes of each identifier is significant.  PSPP now
  reads and writes system files compatible with SPSS version 12.

  New --algorithm and --syntax command line options allow
  SPSS-compatible or enhanced modes to be selected.

  Support for transformation expressions has been rewritten and
  significantly improved.  Refer to the manual for details.

  Calculation of moments (mean, standard deviation, kurtosis,
  skewness) has been rewritten and should now be more accurate.  In
  --algorithm=enhanced mode moments may be more accurate than SPSS in
  some cases.

  Numerous bugs have been fixed, too many to mention here.  Many new
  tests have been added, leading to the discovery and fixing of many
  of these bugs.

  The ASCII output driver can now squeeze multiple blank lines into
  single blank lines.

  Much of the code has been rewritten and refactored.  It is now much
  cleaner.

  The FILE TYPE and REPEATING DATA commands have been disabled for
  this release because their implementations were deemed too buggy to
  be useful.  They will be fixed and replaced in a future release.

  New pspp-mode for Emacs (in pspp-mode.el).

  Added rudimentary command-line completion for interactive input.

  lib/julcal and lib/dcdflib are no longer used, so they have been
  removed.

  For developers, the build system now requires Autoconf 2.58 and
  Automake 1.7.  The included gettext has been updated to version
  0.12.1.

  Some reports state that Texinfo 4.8, the latest version, may be
  necessary to successfully format the documentation on some systems.

Version 0.3.0 changes since 0.2.3:

  Bugs fixed:

    * Using alphanumeric variables in functions under AGGREGATE
      segfaulted.  Fixed.

    * Under certain circumstances, the final case would be omitted
      from the results of an AGGREGATE operation.  Fixed.

    * Undefined behavior was invoked by referencing a freed pointer
      under certain circumstances.  Fixed.

    * A wrong record size was displayed when paging the active file to
      disk.  Fixed.

    * Not having enough temporary space for sorting caused a core
      dump.  Fixed.

    * Syntax errors in function descriptions on AGGREGATE caused core
      dumps.  Fixed.

    * A null pointer was dereferenced, causing a core dump, when
      PERCENTILES was specified on FREQUENCIES.  This fixes the
      problem, but PSPP still doesn't calculate percentiles.

    * SORT always sorted in ascending order.  Fixed.

    * Some minor memory leaks in the expression parser were removed.

    * Many assertions fixed for strict ANSI C compliance.

  New features:

    * SET ECHO ON now implemented, but turned off by default.

    * PRINT specifier supported on END REPEAT.

  Other:

    * System libgmp2 library is used if installed instead of
      unconditionally using the included libgmp2 subset.

    * Extensive code cleanup, which continues.

    * Added CORRELATIONS command parser, but not implemented.

Version 0.2.3 changes since 0.2.2:

  Bugs fixed:

    * SPLIT FILE with a string variable caused a core dump.  Fixed.

    * Nested INCLUDEs didn't work.  Fixed.

    * The MATCH FILES procedure set the values of variables not present
      to 0.  It should have been SYSMIS.  This is now fixed.

    * The REMARK command was too aggressive about skipping lines.  It
      didn't like being the last command in a file.

    * Comment parsing wasn't consistent with the rest of the code in its
      idea of where one command ends and another starts.  This meant
      that sometimes commands would be mysteriously ignored.  Thanks to
      Dr. Dirk Melcher <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.

    * The TABLE subcommand on MATCH FILES worked only erratically at
      best.  This fixes it.  Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
      <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.

    * VARIABLE LABELS rejected a slash before the first variable
      specification, contradicting the documentation.  Thanks to Walter
      M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for reporting this bug.

    * Because of an incorrect optimization in memory allocation,
      CROSSTABS sometimes segfaulted when asked to output multiple
      tables.  Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
      reporting this bug.

    * CROSSTABS didn't display value labels for column and row
      variables.  Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
      reporting this bug.

    * WRITE didn't write line ends.  Fixed.  Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
      <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.

    * The TABLE subcommand on MATCH FILES worked only erratically at
      best.  This fixes it.  Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
      <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.

    * VARIABLE LABELS rejected a slash before the first variable
      specification, contradicting the documentation.  Thanks to Walter
      M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for reporting this bug.

    * Because of an incorrect optimization in memory allocation,
      CROSSTABS sometimes segfaulted when asked to output multiple
      tables.  Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
      reporting this bug.

    * CROSSTABS didn't display value labels for column and row
      variables.  Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
      reporting this bug.

    * WRITE didn't write line ends.  Fixed.  Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
      <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.

    * MATCH FILES corrupted memory and dumped core on some syntax
      errors.  Fixed.

    * MATCH FILES should set numeric values not available to the
      system-missing value, not to 0.  Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
      <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.

    * KEEP didn't work properly on the SAVE procedure.  Fixed.  Thanks
      to Ralf Geschke <ralf@kuerbis.org> for reporting this bug.

    * Memory leak fix.

    * Some systems didn't like the way open_file was coded.  Thanks to
      Hankin <hankin@rogue.consultco.com> for pointing this out.

    * The SAVE procedure didn't save long string variables properly.
      Fixed by this patch.  Thanks to Hankin
      <hankin@rogue.consultco.com> for this patch.

    * Minor documentation fixes for MATCH FILES.

Version 0.2.2 changes since 0.2.1:

  Bugs fixed:

    * Fix behavior of PRINT SPACE for negative arguments.

    * Fix reading some unusual system files.

    * Fix LIST problems with very long variables.  Thanks to Hankin
      <hankin@dunno.com> for this bug report.

    * Fix problems with some string format specifiers.

    * Fix use of $CASENUM in expressions.  Thanks to Dirk Melcher
      <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.

    * Additional DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST fixes.  Thanks to
      Hankin <hankin@dunno.com> again on this one.

    * Sometimes you may encounter a PSPP script that has to be
      interpreted in interactive mode.  Now you can use the -i flag to
      do this.

    * Warnings for egcs 1.1.1 cleaned up.  (However you'll get lots of
      `unused variable' warnings under gcc 2.7.2.3, fixing this will
      take more effort.)

    * Tests fixed.

    * The files in gmp need the internationalization directory in
      their include path.  Thanks to OKUJI Yoshinori
      <okuji@kuicr.kyoto-u.ac.jp> for pointing this out.

Version 0.2.1 changes since 0.2.0:

  Bugs fixed:

    * Remember to include examples/ directory in distribution :-)

    * Fixed gmp compile problems for some non-i386 architectures.
      Thanks to Hans Olav Eggestad <olav@jordforsk.nlh.no> and others
      for reporting this.

    * DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST parsing of input files is now
      matches the documented behavior exactly, and error messages are
      more helpful.  Thanks to Mark H. Wood <mwood@IUPUI.Edu>.

Version 0.2.0 changes since 0.1.0:

  Procedures now implemented:
    * CROSSTABS.  Please see documentation for caveats.

  Transformations and utilities now implemented:
    * AGGREGATE
    * APPLY DICTIONARY
    * CLEAR TRANSFORMATIONS
    * DISPLAY (all subcommands).
    * ERASE
    * FLIP
    * EXPORT
    * HOST
    * IMPORT
    * MATCH FILES
    * MATRIX DATA
    * NEW FILE
    * REPEATING DATA

  Support for input and output through pipes: "|command" and
  "command|" filenames; support for special filenames "-", "stdin",
  "stdout", "stderr".

  New command-line features:
    * New option --testing-mode: Invoke heuristics to assist testing.
    * New option --safer, -s: Don't allow certain unsafe operations.
    * New option --command=CMD, -c CMD: Perform literal command CMD.
    * rc file ~/.pspp/rc is executed before any other files.
    * Now multiple syntax files can be specified.

  Operator LAG is now implemented.

  Added missing FILE subcommand to REREAD.

  Table output manager completely rewritten.

  Device configuration file syntax changed.  You will need to
  reinstall your `devices' file.

  New output driver for HTML.

  PostScript driver and prologue simplified.

  Many bugs fixed.  General source-code cleanup.

  Added Texinfo documentation for:
    * PSPP system file format
    * PSPP portable file format
    * How to write input for q2c parser generator
    * HTML driver

  PSPP language is now fully documented.  Please report any
  inaccuracies or omissions in the documentation.

Changes for version 0.1.0:

  First public release.  For changes from unreleased development
  versions, please see ONEWS.
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