General reminder

[John Darrington]

This is a general reminder to everyone about how to ask for help with PSPP.
This message is sent to everyone who joins this list, but it seems that 
some people joined a long time ago and have forgotten.




You are strongly recommended to read Eric Raymond's excellent text "How to ask 
questions the smart way" which you can find at 
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html 

The following points in particular are especially relevant.

* State which version of PSPP you are using.  In the GUI you can see this using 
  the menu Help|About - In the command line "pspp --version" will tell you.  If 
  you are using a precompiled binary downloaded from some 3rd party website, or 
  a package from a distributes OS such as Ubuntu or Debian that is also 
relevant.

* State the operating system you are using - and be specific as possible.

* Include in your message a copy of the syntax which you have been trying.  If 
  you are using the GUI, the syntax automatically gets logged in the file 
called 
  pspp.jnl

* Choose the right forum: If you are sure you have found a bug AND you are 
  using a very recent pspp version, then open a bug report at 
  http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=pspp AFTER you have checked to see that 
  it's not already been reported.  If you are not sure whether your problem is 
  a bug or not, assume that it's not and ask on address@hidden Please do 
  not send help requests to the developer's mailing list.

* If somebody replies to your question and you need to follow it up, post your 
  follow-up question to the list.  Don't send the person a private email unless 
  they explicitly invite you to.


Thanks for listening.



-- 
PGP Public key ID: 1024D/2DE827B3 
fingerprint = 8797 A26D 0854 2EAB 0285  A290 8A67 719C 2DE8 27B3
See http://pgp.mit.edu or any PGP keyserver for public key.

signature.asc
Description: Digital signature