Release Announcement: STATIST 1.3.1

[Jakson A. Aquino]

Lightweight statist(ical) application release!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Statist 1.3.1 is available!

  This is a new development quality release 

  The statist community likes your feedback,
  e.g. on the mailinglist available from the homepage.

What is Statist?
================

  Statist is a small and portable statistics program written in C.
  It is terminal-based, but can use Gnuplot for plotting purposes.
  Scripting is possible and Statist handles big datasets
  reasonably well on small machines. It is also easy to use due to
  its interactive menu, being a very handy tool also for those who
  do not use statistics every day.

  Statist is Free Software under GNU GPL v>=2.


THE DOCUMENTATION
=================

  The statist user manual is available in both English and
  Portuguese.  

  The German documentation is partially outdated, but it contains
  information about the statistical functions and the way the
  program works that are not covered by the new user manual.


REQUIREMENTS
============

  Statist is very portable.  It can be compiled in practically any system
  with any C compiler. However, and the system must have libintl and
  libiconv to compile the program with support for languages other than
  English.  If gnuplot is installed, statist can create graphics.

  Some GNU core utils -- gawk and sort -- are useful additions to
  prepare databases for use with Statist.


DISTRIBUTION
============

  Statist source code and some pre-compiled binaries are available at
  its homepage: http://wald.intevation.org/projects/statist/


INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES IN VERSION 1.3.1
=====================================

  * The user has no longer to tell statist how many columns will be
    chosen.  This new behavior might break most scripts written for
    previous versions of statist. If you are running statist under
    scripts, you should either adapt your scripts or not upgrade for
    version 1.3.1.


NEW FEATURES IN VERSION 1.3.1
=============================

  * Statist can deal with value labels and column titles: with the option
    --labels, statist reads column and value labels from a file. Example:
    You might have a column with the name "tvhours", and the title "How
    many hours do you watch TV every day?".
	  
  * Eliminated the 60 columns limit: Now the limit to the number of
    columns depends on the the maximum number of files that the operating
    system can open simultaneously.

  * You can edit a configuration file (~/.statistrc) to customize some
    features of statist.
	
  * Menu item "Preferences": You can also customize some features while
    statist is running, and save your new preferences. Comments in the
    ~/.statistrc file are preserved.
	
  * Statist will list the content of current directory when the user is
    asked to enter a file name. 
	
  * Menu item "Export data base as fixed width data file".

  * Replaced "List data of one column" with "List data of columns". It's
    possible to see data of many columns simultaneously.

  * Improved the menu option "List names of columns". It's possible to
    show not only column names, but also column titles and value labels.

  * New descriptive menu items: "Frequency table", and "Compare means".


BUGS FIXED IN VERSION 1.3.1
=============================

  * "Data manipulation / Invert values (1/x)": the inverted values were
    not corresponding to the original ones because rows with missing
    values were being deleted before the inversion.

  * Gnuplot graphics: the xtics were disappearing from the graphics after
    some analysis. The new command sent by statist to gnuplot avoids
    this.
	
  * Name of gnuplot data file is no longer fix: If the name of the
    gnuplot data file already exists, a number is added to the name. Now
    it's possible to use the gnuplot command "replot" with multiple
    instances of statist. This closes the bug report opened on Sep 12,
    1997.

  * Uninitialized variables were being used when running "Partial linear
    correlation".

  * "Miscellaneous / Enter gnuplot commands": The function was testing
    only if the user typed "quit". However, gnuplot quits whenever the
    first letters in a line might unambiguously be interpreted as "quit"
    or "exit".  Gnuplot also skips leading blank characters. The bug was
    causing statist to run in an infinite loop when the wrong letters
    were sent as commands to gnuplot. Now, Statist is overzealous. It
    closes the pipe with gnuplot whenever the line first letters are
    either "q" or "ex".

  * "Multiple linear correlation" and "Cross-validation of multiple
    linear regression": The values of the columns "resi" and "pred_" were
    in the wrong rows if there were missing values.

  * "Probit analysis": Now there is a limit to the number of error
    messages printed in the screen if the user chooses the wrong
    variables.  Without this limit, the number of errors printed were a
    problem with very big data files (thousands of rows).

  * "Log-transformation (base 10)" and "Log-transformation (natural
    logarithm)" are no longer aborted if there are values equal or lower
    than zero.  The results become missing values.

  * Now, to pass more than one file as argument for statist is fatal
    error only if statist is running in silent mode. If in interactive
    mode, the user will only receive a warning.

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