Re: PSPP should remove the scary, misleading message about "UNRELEASED TEST SOFTWARE! NOT FOR PRODUCTION USE!"

[Mark Hancock]

In reference to John's comments:

First, you seem to have ignored my point about the title bar being the wrong place for this, so maybe in the same way that you're accusing people of not reading instructions, it seems from my perspective like you're not reading these emails carefully (though I'm sure you are from your perspective, and it also is clear that you care deeply about this software, which is great!).

For 1. Many people don't read title bars, either (and labeling "kinds of people" I think is a bit dangerous here). I think to rephrase this: there are many people that go to the Windows download page and have great difficulty understanding what they are seeing, but there's some clickable links that look like downloadable things, so they try the top-most, highest-numbered one. I would forgive *many* people for not understanding the following text: "These are development versions, build (sic) from daily snapshots. If you encounter a problem or have suggestions for improvement please report it in address@hidden. Don't forget to check the pspp-users list for answers." This text also appears at the bottom, so after you've found the link you're looking for, and it really does look like a footnote, and the entire internet trains us not to read footnotes.

By the way, some people *have* been using this email address, so maybe they did read?

For 2. I agree that you state this, but not that you state it clearly. I go through this with my graduate students all the time: just because you have text somewhere, doesn't mean you should expect it to be interpreted the way you intended (I think this is also the problem with the title bar text, by the way).

Perhaps this could be fixed with a change to the formatting of the download page. Take GIMP for example (another GNU project that has good support for Windows), their download page starts with the header "Current Stable Version" followed by the text "The current stable release of GIMP is 2.8.16 (2015-11-21)". I think that is far more clear than what PSPP is doing. There is also a big giant button for downloading the current stable release, and you have to scroll way down to "get into trouble" with source code, etc.

I don't think PSPP has to have as sophisticated a page as GIMP, but even just paying attention to the usability of that page would be a far more effective approach than putting ALL CAPS in the title bar.

Hopefully this helps.

Mark

On Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 4:08 PM, Alan Mead <address@hidden> wrote:

John,

It sounds like I'm wasting your time appealing to your sympathies for >90% of the software users world-wide. That's fine.

On 2/24/2016 2:20 PM, John Darrington wrote:

Pspp builds fine for me on a stable Debian release.  If you can provide
details of the problem preventing you from building on CentOS we will try
to address that.

I think it's no more complex than PSPP having library requirements that CentOS 6 will never meet (without developer-level efforts). We can also see that PSPP's requirements are accelerating away from CentOS 6.  Here are the details:

./confgure on pspp-0.8.5 produces:

configure: error: The following required prerequisites are not installed.
You must install them before PSPP can be built:
        glib 2.0 version 2.32 or later (or use --without-gui)

address@hidden pspp-0.8.5]$ rpm -qi glib2
Name        : glib2                        Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 2.28.8                            Vendor: CentOS
Release     : 4.el6                         Build Date: Wed 15 Oct 2014 01:33:45 PM CDT
Install Date: Thu 11 Dec 2014 09:14:21 AM CST      Build Host: c6b8.bsys.dev.centos.org
Group       : System Environment/Libraries   Source RPM: glib2-2.28.8-4.el6.src.rpm
Size        : 8047174                          License: LGPLv2+
Signature   : RSA/SHA1, Fri 17 Oct 2014 03:02:33 PM CDT, Key ID 0946fca2c105b9de
Packager    : CentOS BuildSystem <http://bugs.centos.org>
URL         : http://www.gtk.org
Summary     : A library of handy utility functions
Description :
GLib is the low-level core library that forms the basis for projects
such as GTK+ and GNOME. It provides data structure handling for C,
portability wrappers, and interfaces for such runtime functionality
as an event loop, threads, dynamic loading, and an object system.

This is the latest version of glib2 provided for CentOS 6.

./configure on  pspp-0.9.0-g072d1b produces this:

configure: error: The following required prerequisites are not installed.
You must install them before PSPP can be built:
        gtk+ 3.0 version 3.4.2 or later (or use --without-gui)
        gtksourceview 3.0 version 3.4.2 or later (or use --without-gui)
        glib 2.0 version 2.32 or later (or use --without-gui)

address@hidden pspp-0.9.0-g072d1b]$ rpm -qi gtk2 gtksourceview2
Name        : gtk2                         Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 2.24.23                           Vendor: CentOS
Release     : 6.el6                         Build Date: Fri 17 Oct 2014 04:22:08 AM CDT
Install Date: Thu 11 Dec 2014 09:14:37 AM CST      Build Host: c6b9.bsys.dev.centos.org
Group       : System Environment/Libraries   Source RPM: gtk2-2.24.23-6.el6.src.rpm
Size        : 12452995                         License: LGPLv2+
Signature   : RSA/SHA1, Fri 17 Oct 2014 03:01:59 PM CDT, Key ID 0946fca2c105b9de
Packager    : CentOS BuildSystem <http://bugs.centos.org>
URL         : http://www.gtk.org
Summary     : The GIMP ToolKit (GTK+), a library for creating GUIs for X
Description :
GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user
interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK+ is suitable for
projects ranging from small one-off tools to complete application
suites.
Name        : gtksourceview2               Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 2.8.2                             Vendor: CentOS
Release     : 4.el6                         Build Date: Thu 11 Nov 2010 10:43:31 PM CST
Install Date: Fri 11 Nov 2011 03:45:16 PM CST      Build Host: c5b2.bsys.dev.centos.org
Group       : System Environment/Libraries   Source RPM: gtksourceview2-2.8.2-4.el6.src.rpm
Size        : 2961012                          License: LGPLv2+ and GPLv2+
Signature   : RSA/8, Sat 02 Jul 2011 11:20:47 PM CDT, Key ID 0946fca2c105b9de
Packager    : CentOS BuildSystem <http://bugs.centos.org>
URL         : http://gtksourceview.sourceforge.net/
Summary     : A library for viewing source files
Description :
GtkSourceView is a text widget that extends the standard GTK+
GtkTextView widget. It improves GtkTextView by implementing
syntax highlighting and other features typical of a source code editor.

This package contains version 2 of GtkSourceView. The older version
1 is contains in the gtksourceview package.

There is no package for CentOS 6 that supplies GTK+ 3 or gtksourceview 3 and glib 2.28.8 is the latest glib for CentOS 6.

-Alan

-- 

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

I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe...
functions on fire in a copy of Orion.
I watched C-Sharp glitter in the dark near a programmable gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like Ruby... on... Rails... Time for Pi.

          --"The Register" user Alister, applying the famous 
            "Blade Runner" speech to software development

_______________________________________________
Pspp-users mailing list
address@hidden
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pspp-users