1 PSPP NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
2 Copyright (C) 1996-2000, 2008-2016 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 0.10.1 to 0.10.2:
9 * CROSSTABS implements a new COUNT subcommand to round case or cell
12 * Help will be opened as HTML in default browser if yelp
15 * Bug fixes, including the following:
17 - T-test with independent samples GUI crashed with string
18 type variable as group variable.
20 - The variable info dialog showed the previous selected variable
21 superimposed with the currently selected one.
23 - The GLM command did not properly deal with missing values. This
26 Changes from 0.10.0 to 0.10.1:
28 * Bug fixes, including the following:
30 - A bug where certain dialog boxes could not be properly populated
33 - Various commands have been hardened against errors when called
36 * Translation updates. Thanks to our translators!
38 Changes from 0.8.5 to 0.10.0:
40 * The QUICK CLUSTER command has a /PRINT subcommand which shows
41 the initial cluster centres and the final cluster membership of
42 each case. The clustering algorithm has also been updated, so
43 as to produce better separated clusters.
45 * A Russian localisation has been contributed.
47 * The GRAPH command now has a /BAR subcommand to draw barcharts.
49 * If the DECIMAL character is set to COMMA then the ',' character
50 will not be treated as a separator by DATA LIST.
52 * The graphical user interface (psppire) has been changed as follows:
54 - It now uses Gtk+ version 3 instead of version 2. Accordingly, it has a
55 somewhat different look and feel.
57 - There is now a Graphs menu to access the GRAPH command.
59 - The status of dialog box widgets are now preserved between calls
60 to the same dialog box for the same dataset.
62 - The dialog box for the Logistic Regression command will now
63 infer that string variables or any varible with a "measure"
64 of Nominal or Ordinal are to be treated as categorical variables
65 and will generate syntax accordingly.
67 * The pspp-convert utility can now decrypt encrypted syntax files.
68 The encrypted syntax file format is unacceptably insecure, so to
69 discourage its use PSPP and PSPPIRE do not directly read or write
76 * The following functions for transformation expressions are new:
78 - REPLACE, for search-and-replace of one string with another.
80 - STRUNC, to truncate a string and trim trailing spaces.
82 - MEDIAN, to compute the median of its arguments.
84 - The TRUNC function in expressions now supports additional arguments
85 for truncating to values other than integers and to indicate a level
86 of rounding fuzz. The default rounding fuzz may now be controlled
87 and displayed with SET FUZZBITS and SHOW FUZZBITS, respectively.
89 * Bug fixes, including the following notable ones:
91 - The correlation coefficient in the paired samples t-test
92 procedure is now correctly calculated when presented with
95 - The ESCAPE subcommand has been removed from GET DATA /TYPE=TXT.
96 For compatibility, the behavior that ESCAPE enabled is now the
97 default and only supported behavior.
99 - Rendering of the variable and data sheets in right-to-left locales
102 - The Mann-Whitney test, when run on a dataset containing values
103 of the group variable, other than those defining the test groups,
104 would incorrectly calculate the ranks. This has been corrected.
106 * The IMPORTCASES subcommand on GET DATA is now ignored, for
109 Changes from 0.8.4 to 0.8.5:
111 * The FREQUENCIES and CROSSTABS commands can now generate barcharts.
113 * The FACTOR command can now perform PROMAX rotations.
115 * SPSS/PC+ system files are now supported on GET and other commands
116 that read SPSS system files. The pspp-convert program can now read
117 SPSS/PC+ system files. Writing the obsolete SPSS/PC+ system file
118 format is not supported.
120 * SYSFILE INFO can now read SPSS/PC+ system files and SPSS portable
123 * FREQUENCIES: A bug was fixed where an assertion failure occured
124 when an empty dataset was presented.
126 * The GRAPH command is now available. Initially it supports
127 scatterplots and histograms.
129 * The RND operator in expressions now supports additional operands
130 for rounding to values other than integers and to indicate a level
131 of rounding fuzz. The default rounding fuzz may now be controlled
132 and displayed with SET FUZZBITS and SHOW FUZZBITS, respectively.
134 Changes from 0.8.3 to 0.8.4:
136 * Formatting of SYSFILE INFO output was made easier to read.
138 * Bug fixes, including the following notable ones:
140 - FREQUENCIES works properly for string variables. (This bug was
141 introduced in 0.8.2.)
143 - CROSSTABS now correctly computes all of the measures that it
144 offers. Some measures have been removed because they were not
147 - The NPAR TESTS calculation of significance for the RUNS
148 subcommand has been corrected.
150 - Planned comparisons in ONEWAY ANOVA now correctly handle negative
153 - The COUNT command now correctly treats missing values as
156 - Conformance fixes to Open Document output format.
158 Changes from 0.8.2 to 0.8.3:
160 * Independent T-Tests displayed the standard error of the difference
161 and the confidence interval for the unequal variances case, where
162 the equal variances case should have been. This has been fixed.
164 * REGRESSION now recognises /STATISTICS=CI(x) which causes confidence
165 intervals for the coefficients to be printed.
167 * When DESCRIPTIVES calculates Z scores, it now omits cases filtered
168 by the current FILTER settings.
170 * PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
172 - Dialog boxes with source variable lists can now choose the sort
173 order; right click and select from the popup menu.
175 - File|Open now allows an encoding to be selected for opening
178 - File|Display Data File Information|External File... now allows an
179 encoding to be selected.
181 - A problem with the Means dialog has been resolved (bug #41433).
183 - Several problems related to the input of spreadsheets have been
184 fixed (bug #41657, #41620
186 * System file related improvements:
188 - With ENCODING="DETECT", SYSFILE INFO can now help the user to
189 pick an encoding for reading a system file that does not identify
192 - SYSFILE INFO now accepts an ENCODING subcommand to specify the
193 character encoding of string data in the system file.
195 - Variable labels over 255 bytes long are now accepted without
196 truncation (bug #41863).
198 - System files that contain duplicate variable names may now be
199 read successfully (bug #41475).
201 Changes from 0.8.1 to 0.8.2:
203 * Charts are now rendered with colours from the Tango palette instead
204 of fully saturated primaries.
206 * Support for new system file variants:
208 - PSPP can now read and write ZCOMPRESSED system files, which
209 compress data much more effectively than older "compressed"
210 files. (The older format is still supported.)
212 - PSPP can now decrypt encrypted system files, using the new
213 pspp-convert utility. The encrypted system file format is
214 unacceptably insecure, so to discourage its use PSPP and PSPPIRE
215 do not directly read or write this format.
217 * Missing values for long string variables are now read from and
218 written to system files in an SPSS-compatible fashion.
220 (Earlier versions of PSPP that supported missing values for long
221 string variables wrote them to system files in an SPSS-incompatible
222 way. To fix the problem, read the system file with this version of
223 PSPP and then save a new copy of it.)
225 * pspp-convert, a new standalone utility for converting SPSS system
226 and portable files to other formats, is now included. The initial
227 version supports comma-separated value files as output format.
228 pspp-convert can also decrypt encrypted system files.
232 - zlib is now a required dependency. (Previously it was optional.)
234 Changes from 0.8.0 to 0.8.1:
240 * Changes to existing commands:
242 - CROSSTABS: The requirement that one expected count must be less than five
243 before Fishers Exact Test will be reported has been removed.
245 * PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
247 - A new set of icons has been contributed.
249 - Syntax windows now parse syntax in "auto" mode, which in practice
250 should mean that both "batch" and "interactive" syntax now works,
251 instead of just "interactive" syntax.
253 - The variable pane of data windows now include a Role column.
257 - System files written by IBM SPSS 21 are now read without warnings.
259 - System files written by "VOXCO INTERVIEWER 4.3" are now read
262 - PSPPIRE should now more gracefully handle syntax files that contain
265 Changes from 0.6.2 to 0.8.0:
271 - DATAFILE ATTRIBUTES
278 - LOGISTIC REGRESSION
282 - PRESERVE and RESTORE
286 - SAVE TRANSLATE to CSV and tab-delimited files
288 - VARIABLE ATTRIBUTES
290 * Changes to existing commands:
292 - AUTORECODE has a new GROUP subcommand.
294 - CROSSTABS has been re-implemented to fix numerous bugs.
296 - EXAMINE: /MISSING=LISTWISE is now the default.
298 - DO REPEAT command has been reimplemented. Now, when DO REPEAT
299 contains an INCLUDE or INSERT command, substitutions are not
300 applied to the included file.
302 - FILE HANDLE has a new ENDS subcommand to select CR or CRLF new-lines.
304 - HOST has been updated to use more modern syntax.
306 - Most commands that work with data files now support a new
309 - MISSING VALUES can now assign missing values to long string
312 - ONEWAY: the POSTHOC subcommand is now implemented.
314 - The following new subcommands to NPAR TESTS have been implemented:
315 COCHRAN, FRIEDMAN, JONCKHEERE-TERPSTRA, KENDALL, KRUSKAL-WALLIS, MANN-WHITNEY,
316 MCNEMAR, SIGN, WILCOXON, and RUNS
318 - SET and SHOW no longer have ENDCMD, NULLINE, PROMPT, CPROMPT, and
319 DPROMPT subcommands. The defaults are now fixed values.
321 - SHOW now has a JOURNAL subcommand, to show the location of the
324 - VALUE LABELS can now assign value labels to long string
327 * Other language changes:
329 - The new DATASET commands replace the "scratch file" PSPP
330 extension, which is no longer supported.
332 - Strings may now include arbitrary Unicode code points specified
333 in hexadecimal, using the syntax U'hhhh'. For example, Unicode
334 code point U+1D11E, the musical G clef character, may be
335 expressed as U'1D11E'.
337 See the "Tokens" section in the PSPP manual for more information.
339 - In previous versions of PSPP, in a string expressed in
340 hexadecimal with X'hh' syntax, the hexadecimal digits expressed
341 bytes in the locale encoding. In this version of PSPP, X'hh'
342 syntax always expresses bytes in UTF-8 encoding.
344 See the "Tokens" section in the PSPP manual for more information.
346 * PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
348 - Added support for non-ASCII characters in strings, labels and
351 - A "Split Window" function is available, which makes it easier to
352 see different parts of a large data file.
354 - Data files can now be opened by specifing their name as the first
355 argument. This means that on a properly configured desktop, double
356 clicking on an icon will open the file.
358 - Foreign formats, such as Gnumeric, OpenDocument and CSV can be imported
359 via using an "intelligent" application assistant dialog.
363 - The new "cairo" output driver supports output in PostScript, PDF,
364 and SVG formats. Its functionality is a superset of that of the
365 "postscript" driver, which has been removed. You must have Cairo
366 and Pango installed to build the "cairo" driver.
368 - Charts are now produced with Cairo and Pango, instead of libplot.
369 Without them, the new graphing features will not work. If you do
370 not have Cairo and Pango installed, you must run `configure' with
373 - The plain text output driver now properly supports multibyte UTF-8
374 characters, including double-width characters and combining
377 - Output to OpenDocument format is now supported.
379 - The HTML output is much improved.
381 * The "pspp" program has a new option --batch (or -b) that selects
382 "batch" syntax mode. In previous versions of PSPP this syntax mode
383 was the default. Now a new "auto" syntax mode is the default. In
384 "auto" mode, PSPP interprets most syntax files correctly regardless
385 of their intended syntax mode.
387 See the "Syntax Variants" section in the PSPP manual for more
390 * The "pspp" program has a new option --syntax-encoding that
391 specifies the encoding for syntax files listed on the command line,
392 as well as the default encoding for syntax files included with
393 INCLUDE or INSERT. The default is to accept the system locale
394 encoding, UTF-8, UTF-16, or UTF-32, automatically detecting which
395 one the system file uses.
397 See the documentation for the INSERT command in the PSPP manual for
400 * Text data files that PRINT and WRITE creates now use the system
401 native line ends by default (CRLF on Windows, LF only elsewhere).
402 Use the new ENDS subcommand on FILE HANDLE to override the default.
404 * A new Perl module allows Perl programs to read and write PSPP
407 * A tutorial chapter has been added to the user manual.
409 Changes from 0.6.1 to 0.6.2:
413 - Dutch, thanks to Harry Thijssen.
415 - Brazilian Portuguese, thanks to Michel Boaventura.
417 Thanks for translations are also due to the coordinators at
418 translationproject.org.
420 * Statistical bug fixes:
422 - REGRESSION: Report correct standard error of the estimate (bug
425 - T-TEST: Report correct significance of paired sample T-test in
426 the common case (bug #26936) and corner cases. Thanks to Mike
427 Griffiths and Matej Cepl for reporting these bugs.
429 * Build fixes and changes:
431 - Fix build with GTK+ 2.17.4 and later.
433 - Make running "make" after running "configure" with different
434 settings reliably rebuild version.c.
436 - Cygwin and MinGW build fixes.
438 - Fixes for building with recent gnulib.
440 - The Makefile now honors two new variables, PSPP_LDFLAGS and
441 PSPPIRE_LDFLAGS, that affect linking of the PSPP and PSPPIRE
442 binaries, respectively. This makes building easier for some
445 - Fixes for "configure --enable-relocatable" (bug #25508).
447 * Data file bug fixes and changes:
449 - Fix reading text data files that contain a mix of white space
450 and commas. Now "a ,b" is treated as two fields containing "a"
451 and "b"; previously it was treated as three, with an empty field
454 - Fix writing corrupted .sav files on Windows.
456 - Fix writing variable labels longer than 252 bytes to save files.
457 Thanks to Robert Westlund for reporting this bug.
459 - Fix writing corrupted .por files (bug #26034).
461 - Fix reading .por files whose initial lines are not padded out
462 with spaces as expected.
464 - PSPP will no longer issue warnings about some .sav file records
465 or values that it does not understand. These warnings were
466 harmless, but needlessly alarmed some users.
468 - Fix crash reading empty string fields from PostgreSQL databases.
470 * Bug fixes that affect PSPP and PSPPIRE:
472 - Users may now control precision of output statistics. Instead
473 of hard coding the width and decimals of output numbers, respect
474 the default format in most instances. Counts are now normally
475 displayed with the format of the weight variable, if any.
477 - Fix crash when an INSERT command specifies the name of a file
478 that does not exist (bug #24569).
480 - Fix crash when CROSSTABS specifies a long-string variable (bugs
483 - Fix crash drawing pie charts with many segments.
485 - Fix crash when NUMERIC specifies an invalid format.
487 * PSPPIRE bug fixes and changes:
489 - On Windows, write the output file to the user's home directory
490 instead of the current directory, to better match user
493 - Some data editor fixes.
497 - Fix typo in BINOMIAL section of user manual (bug #25892).
499 Changes from 0.6.0 to 0.6.1:
501 * Statistical bug fixes:
503 - Report correct standardized regression coefficients in linear
504 regression output (bug #23567).
506 * Bug fixes that affect PSPP and PSPPIRE:
508 - Avoid crash with pie charts (bug #24014).
510 - Don't append % to count totals (bug #24003).
512 - Don't crash on bad input (bug #24031).
514 - Don't crash if "end data." is not left aligned (bug #24115).
516 - Change default workspace value to 64 MB, to avoid unnecessary
517 disk accesses on modern machines.
521 - Add ".sav" or ".por" suffix to filename when saving with Save_As
524 - Make it possible to reopen the output window on Windows (bug
527 - A POSIX regular expression library is now included and used
528 automatically if the host does not have one or has one that is
531 * Build fixes and changes:
533 - Work around bug in GSL that prevented build with recent GCC
534 versions without manually adding -fgnu89-inline to CFLAGS.
536 - Also warn about missing prerequisites as we encounter them (bug
539 - Distribute necessary files to allow users working from the
540 distributed tarball to configure with --enable-gui-tools.
542 - Append $(EXEEXT_FOR_BUILD) to output file name when building
543 q2c, fixing build problems on Windows.
545 - GSL 1.8 or later is now required.
547 - Build errors with --enable-relocatable were fixed.
549 * The German translations were removed, since native German speakers
550 found them too poor to be useful.
552 Changes from 0.4.0 to 0.6.0:
554 * The PSPP license is now version 3 or later of the GNU General
555 Public License. Previously, it was version 2 or later.
557 * PSPP now has a graphical interface, called PSPPIRE. This
558 interface allows you to enter data and variable definitions
559 interactively. Commands may be executed in syntax form, or by
560 using the interactive dialog boxes available from the dropdown
563 * A few sample syntax files are now included in the `examples'
566 * Numerous major and minor bugs have been fixed.
570 * The INSTALL file now reflects the details of how to install
571 PSPP. It is a tailored version of the generic installation
572 instructions, instead of a verbatim copy.
574 * iconv, which is ordinarily installed as part of a Unix-like
575 system, is now required. If you don't have it already, you can
576 install GNU libiconv (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/).
578 * libxml2 and zlib are new optional dependencies. They are
579 required to use PSPP's support for reading Gnumeric files.
581 Statistical procedure changes:
583 * REGRESSION is a new procedure for fitting linear models to data
584 via least-squares estimation.
586 * NPAR TESTS is a new procedure for non-parametric tests. In this
587 release, it supports binomial and chi-square tests.
589 * RANK is a new procedure to rank variables. It supports numerous
592 * FREQUENCIES can now output histograms and pie charts. These
593 features were present in earlier releases, but not documented.
595 User interface changes:
597 * In many situations where PSPP once terminated with a fatal
598 error, PSPP now recovers and continues execution.
600 * PSPP is now able to start up and run even if it cannot find its
603 * Journaling of interactive commands to a disk file is now
604 implemented. By default, journaling is enabled, to a file named
605 `pspp.jnl' in the current directory. SET JOURNAL may be used to
608 * The use of `+' between syntax file names on the command line to
609 prevent the dictionary from being cleared between their
610 executions is no longer supported. All syntax files are now
611 executed as if `+' had been specified.
613 * The -d/--define and -u/--undef command line options are no
614 longer supported. Instead, use /usr/bin/env or shell primitives
615 to define or clear environment variables before invoking PSPP.
617 * If a syntax file named named `rc' is found in a configuration
618 directory (such as $HOME/.pspp), it is executed before any
619 syntax file specified on the command line. The -r or
620 --no-statrc command line option may be used to disable this
625 * Output configuration options have changed. Please refer to the
626 manual for a full description of the available options.
628 In consequence, you will need to reinstall your "devices" file.
629 "make install" will do this for you.
631 * Most error messages are now written to PSPP output files by
632 default. SET ERROR can be used to disable this behavior.
634 * When invoked interactively, PSPP now by default produces output
635 on the terminal, piping it through the "more" program.
636 Previously, by default output was written only to file
637 pspp.list. On most terminals, the page length used for output
638 automatically adapts to the terminal size, even if the terminal
643 - This driver now supports charts in output. Charts are written
644 as separate files that the main output file refers to. By
645 default, charts are written in PNG format to files named
646 pspp-1.png, pspp-2.png, and so on.
648 - Configurations are provided that use VT100 (and xterm)
649 line-drawing characters in tables. The option "-o list-vt100"
650 requests use of this device for output to pspp.list.
654 - The default paper size is now determined using the PAPERSIZE
655 environment variable, or the LC_PAPER locale category on
656 systems that support it. If these are not set, the default is
657 now A4, instead of US letter. To make US letter the default,
658 set PAPERSIZE to "letter" in your environment.
660 - Font metrics are now read from AFM files, instead of
661 Groff-format metrics files. PostScript fonts can now be
664 In consequence, you will need to install an AFM file for each
665 font used in PostScript output. "make install" will install
666 AFM files for the standard PostScript fonts, including the
667 ones that the PostScript driver uses by default.
669 - Standard paper sizes no longer need to be specified through a
670 configuration file. The "papersize" configuration file is no
671 longer needed, or supported.
673 - The PostScript prologue is no longer obtained from the
674 "ps-prologue" configuration file. This configuration file is
675 no longer needed, or supported.
679 - The HTML prologue is no longer obtained from the
680 "html-prologue" configuration file. This configuration file
681 is no longer needed, or supported.
683 Command language changes:
685 * The following commands are new:
687 - GET DATA, which currently supports reading Gnumeric files and
688 text data files. It will be extended later to read other
689 types of foreign data.
691 - CD, to change the current directory.
693 - INSERT, to execute a syntax file.
695 - DELETE VARIABLES, to remove variables from the active file
698 - ADD DOCUMENT, to add text to active file documents.
700 - CLOSE FILE HANDLE (a PSPP extension; see below).
702 - XEXPORT, a PSPP extension that is a transformation equivalent
705 * The following functions for transformation expressions are new:
707 - DATEDIFF, for computing the difference of two dates.
709 - DATESUM, for advancing a date by a specified duration.
711 - VALUELABEL, to obtain the value label for a value.
713 * PSPP now supports very long string variables (over 255 bytes
716 * MATCH FILES now supports the FIRST and LAST subcommands.
718 * Previous versions of PSPP prohibited using commands to both read and
719 write a single file at the same time. Now, PSPP allows this, and
720 the new version of the file atomically replaces the old version.
722 * The following commands are no longer available. They will be
723 re-implemented in a later release:
725 - CLEAR TRANSFORMATIONS
731 * The PROCESS IF command, which was deprecated, has been removed.
732 You may replace any usage of it by SELECT IF following
733 TEMPORARY, which has the same effect.
735 * The output format for variables created by VECTOR may now be
736 specified as part of the VECTOR syntax.
738 "Scratch files", a new PSPP extension:
740 A scratch file, like a system file, consists of a dictionary and
741 any number of cases. Small scratch files are stored in memory;
742 one that grows too large is written to disk. By default, any file
743 handle whose name begins with # is assumed to refer to a scratch
746 Scratch files can be used just about anywhere a system or portable
747 file can be used. Also, portable files are now allowed in most
748 places that system files were allowed in previous PSPP version.
750 A new CLOSE FILE HANDLE command allows the storage associated with
751 scratch files to be freed. It also allows file handles to be
752 reassigned to new files.
754 For more information on scratch files, refer to the "File Handles"
755 section in the PSPP manual. For specifics of what commands now
756 allow what kinds of files to be specified, refer to the
757 documentation on those particular commands.
761 * Binary formats and IBM/360 formats, including ASCII/EBCDIC
762 translation, are now supported. Use FILE HANDLE to specify the
763 format of these files.
765 * Little-endian, big-endian, and VAX-endian formats are now
766 supported for integer binary formats when reading and writing
767 data files. The new RIB and WIB subcommands on the SET command
768 control endianness of integer data. The default is the host's
771 * IEEE 754, VAX, and IBM hexadecimal formats are now supported for
772 floating point binary formats when reading and writing data
773 files. The new RRB and WRB subcommands on the SET command
774 control the floating point format. The default is the host's
775 native floating point format.
777 * DATA LIST now supports the SKIP subcommand, to skip records at
778 the beginning of a file. For compatibility, DATA LIST now
779 treats N format as F format for FREE and LIST format input.
781 * The SAVE and XSAVE commands now support the UNSELECTED,
782 PERMISSIONS, NAMES, and MAP subcommands.
784 * The EXPORT command has been re-implemented to obtain better
785 results. Support for the UNSELECTED, DIGITS, and TYPE
786 subcommands has been added.
788 * For compatibility, PRINT now inserts a space at the beginning of
789 every output line, even lines that would otherwise be blank,
790 when OUTFILE is specified. (The behavior of WRITE is
793 * For compatibility, PRINT EJECT now inserts the digit `1' at the
794 beginning of each line that should begin a new page.
796 * For compatibility, WRITE now outputs the system-missing value as
797 a field filled with spaces. Binary formats are an exception.
798 (The behavior of PRINT is unchanged.)
802 * Input and output format descriptions have been rewritten. They
803 now precisely describe what is accepted on input and written on
806 * The descriptions of the PSPP system and portable file formats
807 have been extensively revised and improved.
809 For developers, the build system now requires Autoconf 2.60 and
812 Changes from 0.3.0 to 0.4.0:
814 Changes in build dependencies:
816 * The GNU Scientific Library (libgsl), version 1.6 or later, is
819 * libplot from GNU plotutils is optional. Without it, the new
820 graphing features will not work. If you do not have it
821 installed, you must run `configure' with --without-libplot.
823 * libgmp2 is no longer a dependency.
825 Newly implemented commands and statistical features:
827 * EXAMINE, including its graphing features.
829 * FREQUENCIES now supports percentiles.
837 * SORT CASES now sorts stably, that is, two cases with equal sort
838 criteria will be in the same relative order before and after the
841 * T-TEST (re-written).
843 * DATE and USE. These commands are parsed but otherwise ignored,
844 to enhance compatibility with certain command files that invoke
847 * VARIABLE WIDTH, VARIABLE ALIGNMENT, and VARIABLE LEVEL. These
848 currently have no effect on PSPP output, but their values are
849 written to and read from system files and thus may affect
850 third-party software.
852 * SET EPOCH implemented.
854 * DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST now support arbitrary field
857 * FILE HANDLE now supports custom tab widths.
859 Long variable names (and other identifiers) are now supported. Up
860 to the first 64 bytes of each identifier is significant. PSPP now
861 reads and writes system files compatible with SPSS version 12.
863 New --algorithm and --syntax command line options allow
864 SPSS-compatible or enhanced modes to be selected.
866 Support for transformation expressions has been rewritten and
867 significantly improved. Refer to the manual for details.
869 Calculation of moments (mean, standard deviation, kurtosis,
870 skewness) has been rewritten and should now be more accurate. In
871 --algorithm=enhanced mode moments may be more accurate than SPSS in
874 Numerous bugs have been fixed, too many to mention here. Many new
875 tests have been added, leading to the discovery and fixing of many
878 The ASCII output driver can now squeeze multiple blank lines into
881 Much of the code has been rewritten and refactored. It is now much
884 The FILE TYPE and REPEATING DATA commands have been disabled for
885 this release because their implementations were deemed too buggy to
886 be useful. They will be fixed and replaced in a future release.
888 New pspp-mode for Emacs (in pspp-mode.el).
890 Added rudimentary command-line completion for interactive input.
892 lib/julcal and lib/dcdflib are no longer used, so they have been
895 For developers, the build system now requires Autoconf 2.58 and
896 Automake 1.7. The included gettext has been updated to version
899 Some reports state that Texinfo 4.8, the latest version, may be
900 necessary to successfully format the documentation on some systems.
902 Version 0.3.0 changes since 0.2.3:
906 * Using alphanumeric variables in functions under AGGREGATE
909 * Under certain circumstances, the final case would be omitted
910 from the results of an AGGREGATE operation. Fixed.
912 * Undefined behavior was invoked by referencing a freed pointer
913 under certain circumstances. Fixed.
915 * A wrong record size was displayed when paging the active file to
918 * Not having enough temporary space for sorting caused a core
921 * Syntax errors in function descriptions on AGGREGATE caused core
924 * A null pointer was dereferenced, causing a core dump, when
925 PERCENTILES was specified on FREQUENCIES. This fixes the
926 problem, but PSPP still doesn't calculate percentiles.
928 * SORT always sorted in ascending order. Fixed.
930 * Some minor memory leaks in the expression parser were removed.
932 * Many assertions fixed for strict ANSI C compliance.
936 * SET ECHO ON now implemented, but turned off by default.
938 * PRINT specifier supported on END REPEAT.
942 * System libgmp2 library is used if installed instead of
943 unconditionally using the included libgmp2 subset.
945 * Extensive code cleanup, which continues.
947 * Added CORRELATIONS command parser, but not implemented.
949 Version 0.2.3 changes since 0.2.2:
953 * SPLIT FILE with a string variable caused a core dump. Fixed.
955 * Nested INCLUDEs didn't work. Fixed.
957 * The MATCH FILES procedure set the values of variables not present
958 to 0. It should have been SYSMIS. This is now fixed.
960 * The REMARK command was too aggressive about skipping lines. It
961 didn't like being the last command in a file.
963 * Comment parsing wasn't consistent with the rest of the code in its
964 idea of where one command ends and another starts. This meant
965 that sometimes commands would be mysteriously ignored. Thanks to
966 Dr. Dirk Melcher <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
968 * The TABLE subcommand on MATCH FILES worked only erratically at
969 best. This fixes it. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
970 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
972 * VARIABLE LABELS rejected a slash before the first variable
973 specification, contradicting the documentation. Thanks to Walter
974 M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for reporting this bug.
976 * Because of an incorrect optimization in memory allocation,
977 CROSSTABS sometimes segfaulted when asked to output multiple
978 tables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
981 * CROSSTABS didn't display value labels for column and row
982 variables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
985 * WRITE didn't write line ends. Fixed. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
986 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
988 * The TABLE subcommand on MATCH FILES worked only erratically at
989 best. This fixes it. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
990 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
992 * VARIABLE LABELS rejected a slash before the first variable
993 specification, contradicting the documentation. Thanks to Walter
994 M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for reporting this bug.
996 * Because of an incorrect optimization in memory allocation,
997 CROSSTABS sometimes segfaulted when asked to output multiple
998 tables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
1001 * CROSSTABS didn't display value labels for column and row
1002 variables. Thanks to Walter M. Gray <graywm@northernc.on.ca> for
1005 * WRITE didn't write line ends. Fixed. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1006 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1008 * MATCH FILES corrupted memory and dumped core on some syntax
1011 * MATCH FILES should set numeric values not available to the
1012 system-missing value, not to 0. Thanks to Dr. Dirk Melcher
1013 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1015 * KEEP didn't work properly on the SAVE procedure. Fixed. Thanks
1016 to Ralf Geschke <ralf@kuerbis.org> for reporting this bug.
1020 * Some systems didn't like the way open_file was coded. Thanks to
1021 Hankin <hankin@rogue.consultco.com> for pointing this out.
1023 * The SAVE procedure didn't save long string variables properly.
1024 Fixed by this patch. Thanks to Hankin
1025 <hankin@rogue.consultco.com> for this patch.
1027 * Minor documentation fixes for MATCH FILES.
1029 Version 0.2.2 changes since 0.2.1:
1033 * Fix behavior of PRINT SPACE for negative arguments.
1035 * Fix reading some unusual system files.
1037 * Fix LIST problems with very long variables. Thanks to Hankin
1038 <hankin@dunno.com> for this bug report.
1040 * Fix problems with some string format specifiers.
1042 * Fix use of $CASENUM in expressions. Thanks to Dirk Melcher
1043 <BZN-mdksh@t-online.de> for reporting this bug.
1045 * Additional DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST fixes. Thanks to
1046 Hankin <hankin@dunno.com> again on this one.
1048 * Sometimes you may encounter a PSPP script that has to be
1049 interpreted in interactive mode. Now you can use the -i flag to
1052 * Warnings for egcs 1.1.1 cleaned up. (However you'll get lots of
1053 `unused variable' warnings under gcc 2.7.2.3, fixing this will
1058 * The files in gmp need the internationalization directory in
1059 their include path. Thanks to OKUJI Yoshinori
1060 <okuji@kuicr.kyoto-u.ac.jp> for pointing this out.
1062 Version 0.2.1 changes since 0.2.0:
1066 * Remember to include examples/ directory in distribution :-)
1068 * Fixed gmp compile problems for some non-i386 architectures.
1069 Thanks to Hans Olav Eggestad <olav@jordforsk.nlh.no> and others
1072 * DATA LIST FREE and DATA LIST LIST parsing of input files is now
1073 matches the documented behavior exactly, and error messages are
1074 more helpful. Thanks to Mark H. Wood <mwood@IUPUI.Edu>.
1076 Version 0.2.0 changes since 0.1.0:
1078 Procedures now implemented:
1079 * CROSSTABS. Please see documentation for caveats.
1081 Transformations and utilities now implemented:
1084 * CLEAR TRANSFORMATIONS
1085 * DISPLAY (all subcommands).
1096 Support for input and output through pipes: "|command" and
1097 "command|" filenames; support for special filenames "-", "stdin",
1100 New command-line features:
1101 * New option --testing-mode: Invoke heuristics to assist testing.
1102 * New option --safer, -s: Don't allow certain unsafe operations.
1103 * New option --command=CMD, -c CMD: Perform literal command CMD.
1104 * rc file ~/.pspp/rc is executed before any other files.
1105 * Now multiple syntax files can be specified.
1107 Operator LAG is now implemented.
1109 Added missing FILE subcommand to REREAD.
1111 Table output manager completely rewritten.
1113 Device configuration file syntax changed. You will need to
1114 reinstall your `devices' file.
1116 New output driver for HTML.
1118 PostScript driver and prologue simplified.
1120 Many bugs fixed. General source-code cleanup.
1122 Added Texinfo documentation for:
1123 * PSPP system file format
1124 * PSPP portable file format
1125 * How to write input for q2c parser generator
1128 PSPP language is now fully documented. Please report any
1129 inaccuracies or omissions in the documentation.
1131 Changes for version 0.1.0:
1133 First public release. For changes from unreleased development
1134 versions, please see ONEWS.
1136 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
1137 Copyright information:
1139 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
1140 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
1141 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
1142 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
1144 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
1145 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
1146 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last
1150 version-control: never