Re: SPSS file format specification

[Ben Pfaff]

On Thu, Jul 09, 2015 at 03:48:55PM -0400, Jonathon Love wrote:
> i did just want to commend you lot on the *astonishingly* good job
> reverse-engineering and documenting the SPSS file format here:
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/pspp-dev/html_node/System-File-Format.html#System-File-Format
> 
> we're adding SPSS file support to our project (JASP) at the moment, and
> we simply could not do it, without such excellent work. i don't think
> i've seen such good documentation for an open format, let alone a
> proprietary one.
>
> i'm trying to find a way we can credit this work in JASP. is there
> someone in particular we should thank?

Thank you for the compliments!  Most of the reverse-engineering work on
the SPSS system file format is mine.  I would be pleased to be cited in
your work.

Looking at the webpage that you cite, by the way, it looks like it is a
somewhat older version.  (That is my fault; I will try to upload the
newest version there soon.)  The newest version also documents the
compressed and encrypted variants of the SPSS file format.  It's
available at:
        
http://benpfaff.org/~blp/pspp-master/latest/source/dev-guide/html_node/System-File-Format.html#System-File-Format