SOFA Statistics 0.7.3 has just been released. I have:
Plus there have been numerous small improvements above and under the hood.
SOFA Statistics is having new import functionality added. The first target is csv format files (using the standard Python csv module underneath) followed by Excel spreadsheets. The solution I have for Excel works even when MS Office has not been installed on a machine but will only work in Windows. Later on I will target SPSS data files and Open Office Calc spreadsheet files.
The main SOFA Statistics website now has a videos page (http://www.sofastatistics.com/videos.php). The first video shows how to make report tables based on your data. Feedback suggests people find the video format helpful so the existing video will be improved and extended. As functionality is added to SOFA, there will be other videos as well. The video is hosted at http://showmedo.com/, which I can highly recommend.
Version 0.7.2 includes a lot of finishing touches for the Make Table functionality of SOFA Statistics.
The Windows installer is a little more polished as well.
The welcome window for the Windows installer now lets people know in advance that there will be multiple packages installed as part of the SOFA Statistics installation. The delay when displaying HTML for the first time has now been put into the first-time startup process and the user is warned in advance. The goal is to make it easy to successfully install SOFA Statistics. The improved welcome screen can be seen under the heading “Why does Windows installation require so many packages” in the FAQ (http://www.sofastatistics.com/faq.php).
NB the latest version is now: (http://www.sofastatistics.com/misc/sofa-0.7.1_python-2.5.zip)
Just started using Bazaar on Launchpad to provide distributed version control for SOFA Statistics. Very nice. And commands like:
bzr commit
bzr push -m “description in here”
are very easy to remember.
Also adding lots of public and internal process documentation. Soon it will be back to adding new features.
Working on raising the search profile of SOFA Statistics. The project is now registered with Sourceforge, Freshmeat and Launchpad.
A windows installer for sofa statistics has been created and is currently undergoing testing on clean machines. NSIS was used to create the installer, which necessitated learning a new script language. The language used by NSIS is a cross between PHP and assembly and was quite a shock after the elegance of python.
Making sure that the program can be manually installed on a clean Intrepid/Jaunty system (see http://www.sofastatistics.com/wiki/doku.php?id=help:installation#ubuntu_linux_intrepid_or_jaunty) exposed a few issues which have now been resolved. The default SQLite database now has 1500 records and is indexed. One of the design goals for the project is easy installation and that is what is being worked on now.
SOFA is an exciting new statistics program. It is free and focuses on being easy to use. And you can use it on your PC or Mac or Linux computer. SOFA won’t replace sophisticated statistics systems like R, but there is a good chance it will do what you need and do it well.
At the moment, SOFA is focused on tabular output but later versions will include attractive charts and a wider range of analyses.
SOFA can connect directly to your database and lets you display results in an attractive format ready to share or put in a spreadsheet. And the goal is that SOFA will help you learn as you go – whether you are a student, business analyst, or researcher.
This project is in rapid development at the moment so keep watching this space!