PSPP-BUG: [bug #41864] Exporting SPSS metadata with "DISPLAY DICTIONARY" from codepage DIN_66003 writes "Custom attributes:" to each variable

[Ben Pfaff]

Update of bug #41864 (project pspp):

                Category:           Output Driver => System/Portable File I/O
                  Status:                    None => Invalid                
             Open/Closed:                    Open => Closed                 

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Follow-up Comment #1:

> An example file (download needs registration):
> https://dbk.gesis.org/dbksearch/download.asp?db=D&id=40413 

This file is bizarre.  It self-identifies as being encoded in windows-1252,
but clearly it is not windows-1252.  You tell me that it is in DIN_66003, and
I believe you, but it has internal contradictions.  The particular one that
you see is that each variable has an attribute that, if one interprets the
strings in the file as windows-1252, is named "address@hidden".  Such 
attributes are
the way that SPSS identifies the role of a variable.  But DIN_66003 has no @,
and in place of @ the DIN_66003 encoding has §, so when you tell PSPP that
the file is in DIN_66003 you get a $§Role attribute for every variable.

I assume what happened here is that some version of SPSS (probably version 18,
that's the version that wrote the file) read the DIN_66003 encoded file as if
it were encoded in windows-1252, then wrote it out, and in the process added
the really windows-1252 attributes.

There isn't any way to reasonably and correctly interpret the whole file as
any single encoding.  One would have to pick and choose which fields are which
encoding.  I can't reasonably add that feature to PSPP.

By the way, do you interpret downloading a file from gesis to figure out why
it isn't read correctly to be a form of scientific research?  I always feel
like I'm lying when I tell it that, but if I tell it that I'm downloading it
for non-scientific reasons, it won't let me do it.  Is software development a
kind of scientific research?

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