Hi Jiří, thanks for your pspp webinterface! I tried it with t-test.sps from the examples and it looks really nice! As Ben already stated this is a big chunk of code. Only weeks before you send your email Johannes told us about his statable project: https://statable.eu <https://statable.eu/> which uses pspp as statistics backend also via webassembly. Both activities use a json driver for interfacing. Discussion about the driver is here:
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68849 Best regards Friedrich > Am 08.11.2026 um 13:21 schrieb Jiří Čepelka <[email protected]>: > > Hello PSPP developers, > > My name is Jiří Čepelka. First of all, thank you for PSPP. > > Why I built this > > It started at my university, where we wanted a user-friendly, free > alternative to SPSS for my co-students. PSPP has an excellent statistical > core, but for people who are new to statistics it was missing some of the > analyses they need, and its interface looked dated and was hard to find your > way around. I wanted to see how far a modern, approachable interface on top > of the PSPP engine could go. > > What came out of it: PSPP Studio > > It is the PSPP 2.1.3 engine compiled to WebAssembly, with a new interface > that runs entirely in the browser (nothing to install, and no data ever > leaves the user's computer). It is available in Czech and English, and PSPP's > own messages are translated into Czech too. > > - Live demo: https://pspp-studio.vercel.app/ > - Source code (GPL-3.0-or-later): https://github.com/jirkacepelka/PSPP > > My question > > I do not have the time to maintain this on my own. Would the PSPP project, or > GNU more broadly, be interested in adopting and maintaining it? It does not > have to stay a web application: the engine and the design are separable, and > the interface could just as well be rewritten as a native desktop application > (for example to replace the current PSPPIRE GTK interface), or reused in some > other form. I care more about the idea of a friendly free SPSS alternative > living on than about the technology it is built with. > > What it adds on top of PSPP > > - dialogs for the common procedures that generate and show the PSPP syntax, > next to a syntax editor > - a data grid with variable view, value labels and a variable inspector > - extra analyses that PSPP lacks, implemented in the browser on top of the > engine (for example GLM with repeated measures and profile plots, line > charts, and others) > - plain-language explanations of results, with effect sizes, aimed at > beginners > - import and export of CSV, Excel, OpenDocument and JSON next to > .sav/.zsav/.por, and export of the output to PDF, Word and HTML > - a guided first-run setup and a modern, accessible design (light and dark > themes) > > About the engine > > My changes to the upstream sources are small, and are in engine/pspp (see > "git log -- engine/pspp"): an optional --without-cairo build, an > html_table_to_string() helper, and Emscripten portability fixes. A small C > bridge (engine/bridge) exposes the library to JavaScript, and the build > scripts are in engine/scripts. The compiled engine is committed so the app > can be built without Emscripten. > > What I would like to know > > 1. Would you be interested in taking this in, as part of PSPP (as a web > interface, or as a model for a new native interface) or as a separate GNU > package? If not, I would be glad of any suggestion for where it could go, or > which of its parts would be worth contributing separately (for example the > Cairo-optional build, or the extra analyses together with their unit tests). > 2. If yes, what would be needed from my side: copyright assignment to the > FSF, following the GNU coding standards (the front end is TypeScript/React, > not C), or something else? I am happy to do the handover work. > > Being open about how it was made > > Most of the front-end code, and the bridge and build scripts around the > engine, were written with the help of an AI model (Anthropic's Claude Opus > 5.5), under my direction and review. I understand that some free software > projects have reservations about AI-assisted code, for licensing, provenance > or other reasons, and I fully respect that. If this is a concern for you, I > understand completely, and I will keep the project separate and not submit > any of that code upstream unless you explicitly ask for it. I would rather > you know it before deciding than find out later. > > Thank you for your time. > > Best regards, > Jiří Čepelka - University of Hradec Králové FF
