PSPP NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
-Time-stamp: <2005-07-24 20:23:41 blp>
-Copyright (C) 1996-9, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+Copyright (C) 1996-2000, 2008-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end for copying conditions.
Please send PSPP bug reports to bug-gnu-pspp@gnu.org.
+
+Changes from 0.6.2 to 0.7.9:
+
+ * New commands:
+
+ - ADD FILES
+ - CORRELATIONS
+ - DATAFILE ATTRIBUTES
+ - DATASET ACTIVATE
+ - DATASET CLOSE
+ - DATASET COPY
+ - DATASET DECLARE
+ - DATASET DISPLAY
+ - DATASET NAME
+ - MATCH FILES
+ - MEANS
+ - MRSETS
+ - PRESERVE and RESTORE
+ - QUICK CLUSTER
+ - RELIABILITY
+ - ROC
+ - SAVE TRANSLATE to CSV and tab-delimited files
+ - UPDATE
+ - VARIABLE ATTRIBUTES
+
+ * Changes to existing commands:
+
+ - AUTORECODE has a new GROUP subcommand.
+
+ - CROSSTABS has been re-implemented to fix numerous bugs.
+
+ - EXAMINE: /MISSING=LISTWISE is now the default.
+
+ - DO REPEAT command has been reimplemented. Now, when DO REPEAT
+ contains an INCLUDE or INSERT command, substitutions are not
+ applied to the included file.
+
+ - HOST has been updated to use more modern syntax.
+
+ - GET, INCLUDE, and INSERT have a new ENCODING subcommand.
+
+ - MISSING VALUES can now assign missing values to long string
+ variables.
+
+ - ONEWAY: the POSTHOC subcommand is now implemented.
+
+ - The following new subcommands to NPAR TESTS have been implemented:
+ COCHRAN, FRIEDMAN, JONCKHEERE-TERPSTRA, KENDALL, KRUSKAL-WALLIS, MANN-WHITNEY,
+ MCNEMAR, SIGN, WILCOXON, and RUNS
+
+ - SET and SHOW no longer have ENDCMD, NULLINE, PROMPT, CPROMPT, and
+ DPROMPT subcommands. The defaults are now fixed values.
+
+ - VALUE LABELS can now assign value labels to long string
+ variables.
+
+ * Other language changes:
+
+ - The new DATASET commands replace the "scratch file" PSPP
+ extension, which is no longer supported.
+
+ - Strings may now include arbitrary Unicode code points specified
+ in hexadecimal, using the syntax U'hhhh'. For example, Unicode
+ code point U+1D11E, the musical G clef character, may be
+ expressed as U'1D11E'.
+
+ See the "Tokens" section in the PSPP manual for more information.
+
+ - In previous versions of PSPP, in a string expressed in
+ hexadecimal with X'hh' syntax, the hexadecimal digits expressed
+ bytes in the locale encoding. In this version of PSPP, X'hh'
+ syntax always expresses bytes in UTF-8 encoding.
+
+ See the "Tokens" section in the PSPP manual for more information.
+
+ * PSPPIRE graphical user interface improvements:
+
+ - Added support for non-ASCII characters in strings, labels and
+ variable names.
+
+ - A "Split Window" function is available, which makes it easier to
+ see different parts of a large data file.
+
+ - Data files can now be opened by specifing their name as the first
+ argument. This means that on a properly configured desktop, double
+ clicking on an icon will open the file.
+
+ * Output changes:
+
+ - The new "cairo" output driver supports output in PostScript, PDF,
+ and SVG formats. Its functionality is a superset of that of the
+ "postscript" driver, which has been removed. You must have Cairo
+ and Pango installed to build the "cairo" driver.
+
+ - Charts are now produced with Cairo and Pango, instead of libplot.
+ Without them, the new graphing features will not work. If you do
+ not have Cairo and Pango installed, you must run `configure' with
+ --without-cairo.
+
+ - The plain text output driver now properly supports multibyte UTF-8
+ characters, including double-width characters and combining
+ accents.
+
+ - Output to OpenDocument format is now supported.
+
+ - The HTML output is much improved.
+
+ * The "pspp" program has a new option --batch (or -b) that selects
+ "batch" syntax mode. In previous versions of PSPP this syntax mode
+ was the default. Now a new "auto" syntax mode is the default. In
+ "auto" mode, PSPP interprets most syntax files correctly regardless
+ of their intended syntax mode.
+
+ See the "Syntax Variants" section in the PSPP manual for more
+ information.
+
+ * The "pspp" program has a new option --syntax-encoding that
+ specifies the encoding for syntax files listed on the command line,
+ as well as the default encoding for syntax files included with
+ INCLUDE or INSERT. The default is to accept the system locale
+ encoding, UTF-8, UTF-16, or UTF-32, automatically detecting which
+ one the system file uses.
+
+ See the documentation for the INSERT command in the PSPP manual for
+ more information.
+
+ * A new Perl module allows Perl programs to read and write PSPP
+ system files.
+
+ * A tutorial chapter has been added to the user manual.
+\f
+Changes from 0.6.1 to 0.6.2:
+
+ * 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:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright information:
-Copyright (C) 1996-9, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
-
Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
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