Re: FW: tell us about what you'd like to do for PSPP

[John Darrington]

On Sun, Jan 02, 2005 at 08:29:30PM -0500, Ronald Szoc, PhD wrote:
     
     I also have a PhD in Psychology, and have been an active researcher, and
     have taught classes at the undergraduate and graduate level in statistics
     and research methodology. Most recently I gave a three hour workshop on
     Logistic and Multinomial regression at the American Evaluation Associate
     meeting this past November. 
     
     Anyway, these days I use SPSS 11.0 for the PC.
     
     So, given my experience, where would you see me as being of most
     help? 


Given that you're already familiar with spss and your qualifications,
I suggest that you start by creating some `real life' test
examples for PSPP.  Although there is a reasonable set of regression
tests, I always find numerous little problems when actually using some
PSPP feature for the first time in ernest ( also I think there is a
need for a public access tutorial site for PSPP ) .

So if you can  try out PSPP on some typical psychological problem
you've encountered, and submit a bug report that would be helpful.
I'd be very suprised if you did that, and didn't find half a dozen
buglets.  Then if you want to start developing PSPP, squashing these
sorts of bugs is IMHO the best way to become familiar with the code.

     
     There is one area where I am deficient: developing under Linux. I 
downloaded
     the PSPP source code, and noticed some file name extensions that I do not
     understand, and certain written statements don't make much sense to me. 
Such
     as: "Just use the ./configure call and develop a version for your 
particular
     environment... " (That's from memory, so it may not be an accurate quote,
     but I sure don't know what ./configure does because it doesn't exist in the
     Microsoft/Windows world)...
     
     On the other hand, I could do development for the Wintel world, if that is
     of any interest for you. Or keep it within Linux... 

PSPP is will run on a variety of platforms, not just those which use
"Linux" for a kernel.   PSPP is known to compile and run on GNU/Hurd,
GNU/Linux, MAC OS X etc.  But read the following from the GNU
maintainers document: 

  "The most important platforms for a GNU package to support are GNU and
GNU/Linux.  Developing the GNU operating system is the whole point of
the GNU Project; a GNU package exists to make the whole GNU system more
powerful.  So please keep that goal in mind and let it shape your work.
For instance, every new feature you add should work on GNU, and
GNU/Linux if possible too.  If a new feature only runs on GNU and
GNU/Linux, it could still be acceptable.  However, a feature that runs
only on other systems and not on GNU or GNU/Linux makes no sense in a
GNU package."

Also, I am sure Ben will explain to you that if you decide to
contribute any code and/or documentation, you will need to sign
certain paperwork to avoid any legal problems.


Hope this information is useful to you.

Regards,

John
     

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