Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: change to ascii

[Ben Pfaff]

Well, the underlying problem is one with fonts or font rendering. PSPP inserts a special character to prevent word-wrapping after decimal points in some cases. This character should be invisible. On some machines, for unknown reasons, it instead renders as a box. I haven't heard recent reports of this, so I've assumed that it was fixed by newer font rendering libraries.

There's a little more information about the problem that this character solves in the commit that introduced it: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/pspp.git/commit/src/output?id=03e0b6914b3c725fe57ba27c7a49a4549c0ff1e8

On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 11:21 AM Robles, John <John.Robles@va.gov> wrote:

Thank you and I have notified our admin and they plan on upgrading this evening.

 

Although I am wondering what would be the issue, just in case the upgrade does not solve it and if it has something to do with my computer?

 

 

From: Ben Pfaff <blp@cs.stanford.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 15, 2023 9:17 AM
To: Robles, John <John.Robles@va.gov>
Cc: PSPp-users@gnu.org
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: change to ascii

 

Thanks.

 

PSPP 1.4.1 is very old. This problem is likely fixed in the newest releases.

 

On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 9:14 AM Robles, John <John.Robles@va.gov> wrote:

I typed in that command and it showed error, but I checked the “About” and it showed “GNU pspp 1.4.1-g79ad47”

 

Someone suggested these below, but I am not really familiar with the function syntax. The syntax was taken from the GNU instruction Plain Text Output Options (PSPP) (gnu.org).

 

 

 

 

From: Ben Pfaff <blp@cs.stanford.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 15, 2023 8:59 AM
To: Robles, John <John.Robles@va.gov>
Cc: PSPp-users@gnu.org
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: change to ascii

 

What version and OS is this? What does "SHOW SYSTEM." report?

 

On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 8:55 AM Robles, John <John.Robles@va.gov> wrote:

Thank you for your response. I am trying to get rid of these characters—box with circles.

I tried UTF-8 and ASCII, but I am accessing the software remotely due to security reasons for our hospital and the application is stored in an external server.

 

 

 

From: Ben Pfaff <blp@cs.stanford.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 15, 2023 8:45 AM
To: Robles, John <John.Robles@va.gov>
Cc: PSPp-users@gnu.org
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: change to ascii

 

Can you say more about the issue? Are you responding to some message from PSPP? Can you provide the message?

 

On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 8:43 AM Robles, John <John.Robles@va.gov> wrote:

Hello,

 

I was informed that I need to change my output to ASCII for normal characters.

I tried many ways in the command line, but I was not successful

Can someone help me?