SPSS 19 - "What's new" (first impressions and quirks)
Posted by Frank Furter on Nov 26, 2010; 5:14pm
URL: http://spssx-discussion.165.s1.nabble.com/SPSS-19-What-s-new-first-impressions-and-quirks-tp3281566.html
After two days' working with SPSS 19 (including the hotfixes up to 19.0.0.7) under Windows 7 64-bit my first impression is: This is the first "SPSS for Java" version with an acceptable interface performance - not quite as fast as Version 15, but notably improved from version 16 and after
However:
- My SPSS is configured to start with an open syntax window. Although 'Automatically open Error Tracking pane when errors are found' has been deselected in the Options menu, the error pane is opened nevertheless when an error occurs. Furthermore, the syntax window opened at startup also has an open error pane right from the start that fills about half of the window size. How can I get rid of this?
- In the Viewer the syntax commands TITLE and SUBTITLE (issued through syntax) appear in the log, but they do not generate any items in the outline, and the title and subtitle also do not appear at the top of the output pages, i.e., these commands have no effect at all. Have they become obsolete? (However, you can still insert a page title manually using Insert -> New Page Title in the Viewer.)
- It appears to me that the first item on each printet output page has a fixed offset from the upper margin, regardless of how many lines of text (if any) are in the page header (from the second page of an output document onwards, the space between the bottom of the header and the top of the first output item decreases with each new header line until the bottom lines of the header are hidden behind the output item). Is there a way to control the space between the header and the rest of the output?
- Using File -> Page Attributes in the viewer I have entered some text in the header and footer boxes and made it the default for new documents. When I open an output document that has customized headers and footers, or create a new one, these custom headers and footers are not shown in the print preview or in the printout unless I open and close the File -> Page Attributes dialog first (albeit without changing anything).
- When I evoke Syntax Help or Help -> Topics for the first time after starting an SPSS session it takes about 3 minutes until the first text is displayed in the browser and about another 2 or 3 minutes until the browser finishes loading on my PC with an i7-960 CPU, 6 GB of memory, a super fast SSD as the system drive, and Windows 7 64-bit. When I close the browser and evoke the Help system again within the same SPSS session it takes just the time that the browser itself requires to load, but after closing and re-opening SPSS the whole process starts over again. How can this be avoided? Is it possible to "cache" the help system permanently?
- Is it possible to copy customized window toolbars from one SPSS 19 installation to another on a different machine?
Any comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Greetings from Germany
Andreas Voelp
URL: http://spssx-discussion.165.s1.nabble.com/SPSS-19-What-s-new-first-impressions-and-quirks-tp3281566.html
After two days' working with SPSS 19 (including the hotfixes up to 19.0.0.7) under Windows 7 64-bit my first impression is: This is the first "SPSS for Java" version with an acceptable interface performance - not quite as fast as Version 15, but notably improved from version 16 and after
However:
- My SPSS is configured to start with an open syntax window. Although 'Automatically open Error Tracking pane when errors are found' has been deselected in the Options menu, the error pane is opened nevertheless when an error occurs. Furthermore, the syntax window opened at startup also has an open error pane right from the start that fills about half of the window size. How can I get rid of this?
- In the Viewer the syntax commands TITLE and SUBTITLE (issued through syntax) appear in the log, but they do not generate any items in the outline, and the title and subtitle also do not appear at the top of the output pages, i.e., these commands have no effect at all. Have they become obsolete? (However, you can still insert a page title manually using Insert -> New Page Title in the Viewer.)
- It appears to me that the first item on each printet output page has a fixed offset from the upper margin, regardless of how many lines of text (if any) are in the page header (from the second page of an output document onwards, the space between the bottom of the header and the top of the first output item decreases with each new header line until the bottom lines of the header are hidden behind the output item). Is there a way to control the space between the header and the rest of the output?
- Using File -> Page Attributes in the viewer I have entered some text in the header and footer boxes and made it the default for new documents. When I open an output document that has customized headers and footers, or create a new one, these custom headers and footers are not shown in the print preview or in the printout unless I open and close the File -> Page Attributes dialog first (albeit without changing anything).
- When I evoke Syntax Help or Help -> Topics for the first time after starting an SPSS session it takes about 3 minutes until the first text is displayed in the browser and about another 2 or 3 minutes until the browser finishes loading on my PC with an i7-960 CPU, 6 GB of memory, a super fast SSD as the system drive, and Windows 7 64-bit. When I close the browser and evoke the Help system again within the same SPSS session it takes just the time that the browser itself requires to load, but after closing and re-opening SPSS the whole process starts over again. How can this be avoided? Is it possible to "cache" the help system permanently?
- Is it possible to copy customized window toolbars from one SPSS 19 installation to another on a different machine?
Any comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Greetings from Germany
Andreas Voelp
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