Alan, I understand your point now. Sorry for misunderstanding. I agree with you but same as you I don't see any solution yet. If there were a active PSPP developer who uses Windows this situation would probably look different. I guess it would be hard to find such new developer to join the team, but maybe the Windows using tester or testers would be enough? I'm not a tester but I'm learning programming in Python so I understand some and start to understand more and more computer science concepts and I could learn more. I have access to Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit) and could compare results with PSPP version running under Linux. I guess we could find some more people ready to perform tests under Windows if you think that it could help.
kind regards, Michal 2014-12-31 18:05 GMT+01:00 Alan Mead <ame...@alanmead.org>: > Michal, > > You are preaching to the choir; one of the ways PSPP improves is through > reports about the wonky bits. > > However I had a point which I didn't make explicitly that bears > explication: I'm not at all sure that PSPP *FOR WINDOWS* is under active > development. One of the ways (probably the main way) that free software > gets better is when developers are motivated to solve their own problems. > Recently Ben added support for new encrypted SAV files and even more > recently old SPSS+ SAV formats. He did that because he enjoys that kind of > work. That's how free software works and why it's often better than > commercial software. > > And here's the point: I don't think that Ben or John ever use Windows, so > any annoyances specific to the Windows version (like not being able to > paste properly) are invisible to them and will never be fixed. Windows is > treated like a distribution package and the Windows-specific issues are a > problem for a Windows package manager to solve. But there is a gap there. > I am grateful for (or I admire and applaud) Harry's work to provide a > Windows version, but he cross-compiles it on (I think) OpenSUSE. I don't > know that there is any developer of PSPP who regularly uses PSPP on Windows > and who is motivated to solve these annoyances in the Windows version. > > And I think that's a problem because, despite Sinofsky's best efforts to > drive everyone away, Windows still has a desktop market share around ~90% > and I'd expect that means ~90% of new PSPP users are trying to use PSPP's > second-class implementation, the Windows version. My specific motivation > for posting about the wonky bits was as a bug report; a Windows user was > trying to use PSPP on Windows to make boxplots and I had pasted exact steps > but even if that user uses the right steps they will encounter the paste > problem and the boxplot they get will (presumably) be flawed in the ways I > described. A couple weeks ago, I had a new PSPP user email me off list > because she was running Windows 8 and she reported that PSPP won't run at > all on her computer. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that she was the > first to try PSPP on Windows 8 (I know I don't have a Windows 8 machine to > try). Another problem I've encountered is that it's easy to create multiple > instances of PSPP(IRE) on Windows (just double-click on two or more > different SAV files in Windows Explorer). So, you can easily have a > situation where you have a dataset open in one window and syntax in another > but, because the windows are attached to independent instances of PSPP, the > syntax cannot access that data. To solve this, one must open a new syntax > window from the window containing target the dataset and paste your syntax > into that window (or save the syntax from one window to a file and open it > in the other window). For an SPSS user, this is extremely confusing > because in SPSS any syntax window can activate any dataset; it's probably > fairly confusing to people who've never used SPSS. But the overall issue > I'm addressing is that I think it's a problem for PSPP that the Windows > version is so wonky. > > So, as you say, this is free software and there is no solution per se, but > I think this is an appropriate forum for raising this issue. > > -Alan > > > On 12/31/2014 9:09 AM, Michał Dubrawski wrote: > > Dear Alan, > > Although what you are saying are things that could be improved in PSPP you > should remember that PSPP is still under development - it is not version > 1.0. > > > > -- > > Alan D. Mead, Ph.D. > President, Talent Algorithms Inc. > > science + technology = better workers > > +815.588.3846 (Office) > +267.334.4143 (Mobile) > http://www.alanmead.org > > Announcing the Journal of Computerized Adaptive Testing (JCAT), a > peer-reviewed electronic journal designed to advance the science and > practice of computerized adaptive testing: http://www.iacat.org/jcat > >
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