Re: PSPP does not allow data entry

[Ryoko Yamamoto]

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply and thank you very much for testing it out. I understand 
that this is not a universal problem. I downloaded PSPP installers (and my 
apologies for the error in year, yes, it is 2018) and re-posted them for my 
students. Most students are using them without a problem. I use the same 
versions for my Mac (Win 8.1) and Window (Mojave) myself - I tried to replicate 
the problem, but could not.

My students were trying to enter a value in the first cell when PSPP deleted 
it, so it is not by design.

I believe this problem is something idiosyncratic or related to a local 
setting, but cannot think of what I can recommend them to solve this problem.

Thanks again,

Ryoko

******************************************************************
Ryoko Yamamoto, Ph.D
Associate Professor, Sociology Department
Acting Associate Director of Academic Assessment
SUNY Old Westbury
******************************************************************


________________________________
From: John Darrington
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2020 3:46 AM
To: Ryoko Yamamoto
Cc: Friedrich Beckmann; address@hidden
Subject: Re: PSPP does not allow data entry

Hello Ryoko,

I don't regularly use Windows or Mac, but I tried on GNU/Linux with both
the released version and the latest HEAD, and couldn't find a problem.

I also managed to borrow a Windows 10 machine to see if I could
reproduce this issue.  Now I'm presuming that what your student
installed was something from Harry Thjissen's Pspp4windows site on
sourceforge? - that seems to be what most Windows users do.

You mentioned an installer labelled 2019-11-09-Daily-32bit.  The most
similar file I saw on that site was 2018-11-09-Daily-32bit (one year
earlier).   Unfortunately I couldn't see the problem you describe using
that either.

When citing version numbers, it's best either to type "pspp --version"
if using the terminal or click the Help->About menu if using the GUI.

The only thing similar to the symtoms you describe is that attempting
to enter a value in an observation when the previous observation is
empty will indeed fail.   That is to say, if there are only 2
observations for a variable, and you attempt to enter a value in row 4
then it'll be blank like you describe.  This is by design - there cannot
be gaps in the data.

Unfortunately GUI errors are hard to describe accurately, because there
are so many ways of doing things, and subtle changes of the user's
input can have different effects.   Maybe it would be possible to get
short video sequence to show the problem your students are seeing?

Also, please note that whilst we try to make pspp work on as wide a
range of systems as possible, GNU and GNU/Linux are what are recommended
and most tested.

Regards,


John



On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 12:40:58AM +0000, Ryoko Yamamoto wrote:
     Hi Friedrich,

     Thank you for your reply. Sorry it took me a while to get OS info from 
students.

     One student uses Mac OS Mojave (I also use PSPP on Mojave without a 
problem) and another student uses Windows 10.

     PSPP Version: The Mac student uses pspp-1.2.0-2.dmg and Windows student 
uses 2019-11-09-Daily-32bit, both the latest stable versions released in Nov 
2019

     I Zoomed with the student using Windows today and saw her problems via 
shared screen. She was able to enter Value Labels, but when she tries to enter 
a Label, PSPP would delete it. When she tried to enter something in Data View, 
the cell reverted back to blank when she hit enter. She was unable to change 
decimal points either. However, she was able to create a new variable with a 
label through a recoding process.

     I would appreciate if you could help us a clue to solve this mystery.

     Thank you,

     Ryoko

     ******************************************************************
     Ryoko Yamamoto, Ph.D
     Associate Professor, Sociology Department
     Acting Associate Director of Academic Assessment
     SUNY Old Westbury
     ******************************************************************

     ________________________________
     From: Friedrich Beckmann <address@hidden>
     Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2020 1:54 AM
     To: Ryoko Yamamoto <address@hidden>
     Cc: address@hidden <address@hidden>
     Subject: Re: PSPP does not allow data entry

     Hi Ryoko,

     could you say which version of pspp and which exact operating system 
version you are using?

     Regards

     Friedrich

     > Am 08.04.2020 um 07:52 schrieb Ryoko Yamamoto <address@hidden>:
     >
     > Greetings,
     >
     > I use PSPP in my class and two of my students are experiencing the same 
problem. When they type in a number in a cell in the data view and hit enter, 
PSPP wipes out the number (does not even leave . ). It is as if the dataset was 
locked not to accept any modification, even though it was a blank, brand new 
dataset.  One student is using Mac and the other is using Windows, so it does 
not seem to be an OS specific problem.
     >
     > Does anyone have any guess what might be causing this problem and how 
they could possibly fix this? Any clues will be appreciated.
     >
     > Thank you in advance,
     >
     > Ryoko
     >
     > ******************************************************************
     > Ryoko Yamamoto, Ph.D
     > Associate Professor, Sociology Department
     > Acting Associate Director of Academic Assessment
     > SUNY Old Westbury
     > ******************************************************************
     >