SOFA Stats

Version 0.8.15 has the following new features:

* Data filtering: If you’re only interested in data for one nation, for example, you can add a filter so reports are derived from that nation’s subset of the data. It is now easy to add, remove, and alter filters to individual tables. This feature makes analysis much more fluid. It is arguably one of the most important changes in long time. Check it out. Almost anywhere you can see tables listed, you can right click on the table name and set, alter, rename, or remove a filter.
* Support for US-style dates: SOFA Statistics now allows the setting of date entry format preferences, e.g. if you are in the US, Canada, the Philippines, Belize, Palau, or the Federated Republic of Micronesia, you may wish to allow mm/dd/yy as a date format for data entry instead of dd/mm/yy. Over time, there will no doubt be other preference options available.
* Default data table now has a datetime field to experiment with.
* More tooltips and misc usability improvements.

There have also been miscellaneous bug fixes including:

* Removed bug which meant you couldn’t immediately open a freshly-created table.

In addition there has been further expansion of test coverage and a fix of sorts for the Karmic launcher. There is a problem (hopefully temporary) where users of GTK applications can click a button, have it depress, and have nothing actually happen (unless they then click on the Enter key). What this means for SOFA Statistics is that when a Karmic Ubuntu user clicked on the new Preferences button, a preferences dialog wouldn’t appear. A partial solution has been to change the launcher slightly so it sets the GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS environment variable. So instead of:

python /usr/share/pyshared/sofa/start.py

the launcher now invokes:
bash -c “GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1 python /usr/share/pyshared/sofa/start.py”

… which solves the problem in many cases. If it doesn’t, the work-around is to mouse click on the Preferences button then press the Enter key. Fortunately, the Preferences button will hardly ever be used. Ideally, the problem will be fixed properly in newer versions of SOFA Statistics as the underlying code libraries are fixed.

The next version (0.8.15) will have two big new features:

• The ability to apply filtering to tables. For example, if you are only interested in the data for one gender you could add a filter so that all the reports you make based on a given table are derived from the selected gender’s subset of the data. It is easy to add, remove, and alter filters to tables.
• The ability to set preferences, e.g. if you are in the US, Canada, the Philippines, Belize, Palau, or the Federated Republic of Micronesia, you may wish to allow mm/dd/yy as a date format for data entry instead of dd/mm/yy. Over time, there will no doubt be other preference options available.

There have also been miscellaneous bug fixes, smaller features e.g. tooltips, and further expansion of test coverage. Now to the most recent fire I had to put out. There is a problem (hopefully temporary) where users of GTK applications can click a button, have it depress, and have nothing actually happen (unless they then click on the Enter key). What this means for SOFA Statistics is that when a Ubuntu user clicked on the new Preferences button, a preferences dialog wouldn’t appear. The solution was to change the launcher slightly so it set the GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS environment variable. So instead of:

python /usr/share/pyshared/sofa/start.py

the launcher now invokes:
bash -c "GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1 python /usr/share/pyshared/sofa/start.py"

… which solves the problem completely.

I made a similar change to the launcher for eclipse. See http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php?&t=msg&th=153842 and http://blog.export.be/2009/10/fixing-eclipse-for-ubuntu-karmic-koala-9-10/.

The latest release not only has the usual bug fixes and usability enhancements, it has a few new pieces of functionality.

• Can modify the design of tables in the built-in SOFA database (variable names, types, order, table names).
• Able to insert and delete rows when editing value labels.
• Can delete tables in the built-in database.
• The sofa id field is now read-only when designing tables and the user gets useful messages if they try to delete it or insert a new field before it.

The bug fixes were:

• CSV importer copes with inconsistent new line characters anywhere they are encountered.
• Fixed bug when a key is deleted in a value list and then OK is hit.
• Removed bug where focus would move erratically when entering long lists of value labels.
• Changing database or table when making table reports resets the column buttons as it should.
• Numbers like 1000000000000.2 are now displayed as simple numbers instead of as 1e+12 etc.
• Newly-created tables appear in the table dropdown list immediately.

IMPORTANT FOR ALL UPGRADING USERS – you must delete the /username/sofa folder first (after storing anything you wish to save). And inside project files, change conn_dets to con_dets.

Removing rough edges and handling less perfect incoming data have been the recent focus of attention. The main changes in 0.8.13 are:

• Better support for inconsistent data and missing values.
• The user is informed what happens to files being imported.
• The user has the option of halting a large raw data table report.
• CSV importing now asks user if file has header and offers to clean up files with mixed line separators.
• New projects have the default SOFA database preconfigured ready to save tables to.
• Program now returns useful message if SQLite table with median or std dev fails because of non-numeric values (in purportedly numeric field).
• Attempts to make new tables without a connection to the default database now receive a useful message.
• Users are given the opportunity to pull out of opening a large data table.

Also importantly, there have been a myriad of bug fixes:

• Fixed bug when using SQLite database other than the SOFA default one.
• Report tables now handle non-numeric values in numeric fields (SQLite).
• Fixed simple but fatal bugs affecting raw and summary tables.
• Fixed bug when user path includes international characters.
• Fixed bug using MS SQL for making report tables.

Another release with an emphasis on quality rather than new features. More new features will be coming soon once the wxWebKit and RaphaelJS technologies are mature enough. In the meantime:

• More flexible installation options on Windows e.g. installing to D:\Program Files rather than C:\Program Files.
• Better support for international text and unicode – e.g. René, Identität, François etc – in project, variable details, html report files, and css files.
• Better interface behaviour when configuring a project.
• Better feedback when errors with missing or malformed files.
• For Galician speakers, a version of SOFA Statistics in their own language now works on Windows.
• Fixed bug allowing new rows to be added to read-only tables if using Tab/Return key on last cell and then repeatedly hitting Tab keys.