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Products: TPL Tables


TPL Tables

TPL Tables is a powerful and flexible cross tabulation system used for both data analysis and publication. It automatically produces professional quality tables in PostScript and HTML.

Powerful Tabulation Engine
Bullet Nesting -- Allows an unlimited number of levels or dimensions. For example, your table could show unemployed people by gender by race by age by marital status.
Bullet Concatenation -- Allows you to simultaneously tabulate many different items and show them in a single table. Your table could show both the number of employees and the average salary for industry then age then gender then race then marital status.
Bullet Layering -- Allows you to produce a table and then layer it by numerous factors. For example, you could repeat the same table for each region of the country. 

In addition to structuring tables, you can also use TPL Tables to:

Bullet Compute new variables and statistics
Bullet Group values into ranges or other categories of your choice (i.e., group states into regions or incomes into ranges)
Bullet Select data with the characteristics that interest you (i.e., age less than 30, income greater than $50,000, or both together)
Bullet Include totals, subtotals and percent distributions
Bullet Calculate medians, percentiles, deciles, and other quantiles

Extensive Formatting Options
TPL Tables has extensive formatting options that make it easy for you to both present your tables in an easy-to-read format and conform to those pesky publication requirements. You control table structure and content by choosing your own settings for:   
Bullet Page breaks, orientation and paper size
Bullet Color of text, lines and data
Bullet Labels, titles, footnotes, page numbers and table placement
Bullet Column widths
Bullet Label break points
Bullet Data value formats, including currency signs, percent signs, commas and decimals
Bullet Placement and thickness of lines
Bullet Type sizes and styles

Features in Version 8.0

Bullet

Character Variables
If a data field contains non-numeric characters and has too many different values to be a useful control variable, it is classed as a character variable. Many chara cter variables have internal structure. For example a date field may have month, day and ye ar subfields. If the subfields are in fixed locations within the field, then the SUBSTRING function may be used to separate them. If the subfieds have markers to s eparate them, then the new CHAR SPLIT command can be used.

Bullet

Rule Formatting
Several new format statements have been added to enable individual rules to be modified. With the new features you can change the color and weight of individual rules. You can also control whether the rules are solid, doubled, dashed, or dotted.


Bullet Export Options
Bullet Spreadsheet (xls, ods)
TPL now directly supports a form of the old Microsoft xls spreadsheet format and the new current international standard ods format which is supported by all current spreadsheet programs. TPL ods export preserves much of the formatting of a TPL table while retaining the distinction between numeric and non-numeric fields and the precision of the numeric fields.
Bullet Webpage(html)
TPL support for html has been vastly improved. Webpages produced from TPL very closely resemble the original pages. There are options to use the original page size or to take advantage of the unlimited size of a webpage by expanding the page size so that page breaks are never caused by the length or width of the "paper". Page navigation bars remain at the top of a page when the page is scrolled.
Bullet Text Tables(txt)
In older versions of TPL, the command POSTSCRIPT = YES/NO; was used to produce tables in a text mode (ASCII) with a fix-width and size font or a graphics mode with varying fonts, colors, etc. Different commands were supported in the different modes. A text mode table could not be edited in Ted. In version 8 of TPL, there is only one mode. Text Tables are an export option. So you can use whatever commands you want and you can edit the table in Ted. If you want a text table, you can then just export it. If you don't like the appearance, you can use Ted to continue editing it until it is what you want.
Bullet Data Table(dat)
A data table is a table which has been modified so that it can be used as data rather than for display. In older versions of TPL, it was produced by the command DATA TABLES; Since a Data Table is a form of Text Table it had the same awkwardness to work with as a Text Table. Now, instead of using the DATA TABLE command, you can just export the table as a Data Table.

Bullet

Other New Features
Bullet TPL ODBC can now access a database with more than 100 tables.
Bullet TPL ODBC can now support schemas.
Bullet Longer html links are now supported in format statements.
Bullet In Windows, TPL now provides better control of which tables or pages are exported.
Bullet TPL provides improved handing of exported tables when fonts are not available on your machine.
Bullet In UNIX, TPL jobs may use the -Q argument to access Oracle when a database name is not required.
Bullet In TED, data values may now be placed in text masks associated with observation variables.
Bullet In Table Builder, REPLACE statement is now implemented.
Bullet Using TED, metadata such as author may be placed in a new PDF.
Bullet In Table Builder, holding the cursor over some controls will cause help comments (tool tips) to appear.
Bullet Codebook Abstract now reports on footnotes created in the codebook.



Features
in Version 7.0

Bullet

Data Drilling (Windows Only)
In Ted, select table cells of interest and use the data drill option. You will then be asked to select which fields you wish to display. TPL will create a report of the individual records which contributed to the selected cells showing the selected fields. The feature is useful for finding errors in your data file or in finding individual records in your data which are of special interest.

Bullet

Define on Multiple Variables
Defines can be done on multiple variables using language similar to a conditional compute.

Bullet

Rank on Value
A new format statement, RANK ON VALUE, has been added. Rather than rearranging rows as with the Rank statement in the table request, this statement just replaces the value in a cell with its rank number. This feature enables you to create a single table containing separate rankings on multiple variables.

Bullet Statistical Testing (Windows only)
Statistical tests such as t-tests Chi squared and anova can now be performed on parts of a table.
Bullet Percent Change
The Percent Change and Numeric Change statements create new observation variables which can be used in table statements. Specification of the statements requires 2 On variables, an observation variable and a control variable. The changes that appear in the table are the change in the On Observation value that occur when you move from one condition of the On Control variable to the next.
Bullet Percents
Several new options have been added to the percent language to make adding percents to a table easier. Also, percents may now be added to a table in Table Builder
Bullet

Other New Features


Interactive Environment
Bullet Ted now has an unlimited level UNDO option. This is especially useful for balancing banked tables and removing the changes made by statistical tests.
Bullet In Table Builder, when windows are expanded, list of variables and conditions are also expanded so more items can be seen.
Bullet TPL, Ted, Codebook Builder, and Table Builder have the option to display the combined Help rather than just the Help for the particular program.
Bullet In Table Builder, a user can now reorder the terms in a quantile statement.
Bullet For database jobs, if a password is not required, there is no prompt.
Bullet The instructions which come up at the start of TPL, TED, Codebook Builder, and Table Builder now have buttons to do the most common actions.
Bullet Table requests can be run from within Table Builder.
Bullet In Codebook Builder, binary data types can be specified as signed or unsigned.
Bullet In Table Builder, Ted, and Codebook Builder, holding the right mouse button down over a variable or symbol will display the full name of the variable or symbol in a box next to the item. New
Language Features
Bullet Some table request may specify that column 3 should be the difference between columns 1 and 2. Because of rounding errors, the displayed results may not match perfectly. The new post compute function DISPLAY specifies that a term in a post compute be rounded to its displayed value before a calculation is performed. This prevents the problem. DISPLAY is actually an undocumented feature in V6 TPL rather than a new feature in V7.
Bullet SUP and SUB now affect the vertical alignment of footnote symbols.
Bullet Post Computes no longer require a variable. You can now write POST COMPUTE CONSTANT = 3; Before, to get a constant value in a request, you would need something like POST COMPUTE CONSTANT = 3 + 0 * COUNT;
Bullet A new format statement has been added to specify the properties of a bank divider.
Bullet Page markers now retain their original size when a table is scaled.
Bullet Alternate Quantile and Median statements have been added to TPL. These statements use a fixed interval range rather than the logarithmic range used by the standard Quantile and Median statements.
Bullet An option is available to suppress the often long list of printed rows in the output file.
Bullet STDEV, STDERR, and VAR can now use weighting variables. In earlier versions of TPL, only MEAN supported weights
Bullet An empty ("") field in a CSV file is now treated as a Null value.
Bullet Footnote text and other properties of footnotes can now be specified at the table level. Before they could only be specified for an entire request. If FOOTNOTES EACH WAFER is specified, footnote text and properties can be specified for individual wafers. Export
Bullet HTML Links and Anchors can now be specified for masks and labels.
Bullet Ted supports specifying the divide character in CSV export. There is also a script option in Windows and Unix for this.
Bullet Line skips are retained when tables are exported to HTML.
Scripts
Bullet A codebook name can be passed to TPL either as a command line argument or in a script. This, combined with the use of MERGE in a datalist, allows a table to be created from multiple files with the same field names but different formats.
Bullet Users can now write scripts which pass multiple tables to change into eps files. In earlier versions of TPL, the eps files would overlay each other because they had common names.
Bullet Scripts options have been added to support export of tables to pdf format.

Features in Version 6.0

New Input and Output Options
Bullet CSV input files -- CSV (comma separated values) and other types of delimited files can now be used as input. Creating new codebooks for delimited files is quick and easy with the wizard-like interface in Codebook Builder. If the first line of data has variable names, you can choose to have them automatically used as the variable names in the codebook.
Bullet CSV output files -- Outputs can be exported as CSV files.
Bullet Tables can be exported in pdf format from within TPL
Bullet Tables can be exported in PC-Axis format. The PC-Axis family consists of a number of programs for the Windows and Internet environment. PC-Axis is aimed at any organization interested in publishing tabular statistical data, and is used by a number of Statistical Offices in different countries to let their users retrieve statistics.
Bullet Major enhancements have been made to HTML output. These include:
* HTML can be exported in CSS (cascading style sheets) format with style names that describe table parts.

* Stub indentation more closely matches the table as displayed in Ted. Stub continuation and stub increment work.
* All other label alignment and spacing options now work also. Labels with multiple alignments will retain these alignments.
* Label wrapping matches the table as displayed in Ted.
* There are no extra rules in stubs.
* Shading is supported for of all or parts of a table.
* End users can scale tables in all commonly used browsers.
* There is an Excel option for better display in Excel.
* The Autosize option allows an entire table to fit in a single html page (no automatic banking or skipping to a new page because the table is too long).
* Table cells are now aligned based on mask (decimal points line up).

New Functions
Bullet Row Banking -- allows narrow tables to be broken at the bottom of a page, or after a selected row, and "wrapped" to the top of the page so that the sections (banks) are displayed side by side.
Bullet Statements have been added for built-in statistical functions so that you do not need to enter the formulas with Computes and Post Computes.
* MEAN weighted or unweighted
* VAR - variance of sample (n - 1)
* VARP - variance of whole population (n)
* STDERR - standard error of means
* STDEV - standard deviation of sample (n - 1)
* STDEVP - standard deviation of whole population (n)
Bullet Ranking -- Table rows can be ranked (sorted) based on the values in a selected data column. Different groups or rows can be ranked differently. The ranking can be descending or ascending. Optionally, a rank column can be added to the table to display the rank number for each row. Another option lets you keep only the top (or bottom) n rows for a particular ranking. With this option, you can request a row to display the residual.

Other New Features
Bullet Table requests are no longer limited to 2 billion potential cells.
Bullet PostScript tables can now be scaled so that more rows and columns will fit on a page. This gives much finer control than you can get by changing font sizes.
Bullet Comments are now retained in approximately their original location for both table requests and format statements even when the requests are generated by an external editor.
Bullet A new quick label editor has been added to Ted, Table Builder, and Codebook builder. You can add simple text in the box or, if you are familiar with the syntax of TPL labels, you can enter entire labels using label grammar. The label entries are checked for validity.
Bullet If you have a Postscript printer, you can now print directly to it in Ted instead of going through the normal print conversions. This produces more accurate output especially for scaled tables.
Bullet Table Builder now supports simpler select, compute, and post compute windows for less experienced users.
Bullet Multiple TPL jobs can be run simultaneously on a single machine. A locking mechanism has been added to assure the jobs do not interfere with each other.
Bullet For organizations where users are not free to modify their Windows directories (e.g. c:\winnt or c:\windows) the tpl.ini file can be stored in some other location.
Bullet Building Codebooks -- A new Unix program called tpl conditions can be used to assist in building codebooks for any type of data that can be used with TPL. It converts partial codebook sources into complete codebook sources, creating condition value lists based on the values in the data. In doing so, it saves you work in creating codebooks and also assures that the codebook source accurately describes the data. The program can also be used to update a codebook source when the data has changed in such a way that additional condition values are needed. This new program replaces the old codebook generator that could only be used with sequential fixed width data files.

Features New to Version 5.2

Accessible HTML Table Output Meets Section 508 Standards
Bullet You can request HTML output in a format that can be used by visually impaired persons. The HTML meets the standards of Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act which requires that U.S. government web sites be accessible. The new JAWS reader software works successfully with TPL HTML output. Sample accessible table.

Tabulation Features

Bullet A new rounding option has been added to provide a choice between rounding data values up and rounding them according to the "round even" rule.
Bullet When there are multiple tables in a table request, data selection can now be applied on a table by table basis so that different subsets of the data can more easily be selected for different tables.
Bullet Computations that take place after tabulation, called Post Computes, can now reference variables created by other Post Computes. This can greatly simplify some computations.

Format Features
Bullet Page Markers can contain a count of the number of pages in the table output so that pages can be labeled with both the individual page number and the count, for example Page 3 of 10.
BulletSpecific instances of a label, for example on a particular row or column of a table, can be replaced without affecting other instances of the label. This eliminates the need to have different sets of labels for unique and unusual situations.
BulletYou can control the minimum number of dots displayed as the dot leader for stub labels on rows with data.

Label Lists
(for TPL-SQL databases)

Bullet For category variables, lists of value/label pairs can be loaded into databases. Now, instead of containing only simple text, the labels can contain any of TPL's advanced label formatting features, for example font choices, indentations, and line breaks.

TPL Scripts for Batch Jobs
(Windows version)

Bullet TPL scripts can be run in background with job status displayed on the task bar. This means that work can be done in other applications while large batches of TPL jobs are running.
Bullet Wild cards (* and ?) can be used in script lines for TED so that fewer commands are required.
Bullet The CHDIR command in scripts now applies to TED as well as to other commands, so there is no need to provide full paths for files in TED commands.
Bullet New arguments for TED let you choose the core file names and destination locations for exported files such as HTML and Encapsulated PostScript.

Interactive Features
(Windows version)

In addition to the Format Features listed elsewhere:
Bullet To speed up interactive editing of PostScript tables in TED, the TPL editor, many new features have been added to give detailed control of items to be changed. For example, instead of editing column by column, you can click or otherwise select multiple specific columns or ranges of columns to change the column width.
Bullet In the label editor, cut and paste can be used and special (non-keyboard) characters can be pasted from the Windows Character Map or entered with the numeric keypad.
Bullet In menus for running jobs, there is a new menu to let you set file extensions so that when you browse for files you will initially see only the files that are suitable for the particular situation.

Features New to Version 5.1.6

Subfields
(for TPL-SQL databases)

Bullet Subfields let you describe variables that are subparts of variables in your database. In non-database codebooks, this functionality is provided by Redefine. Examples of variables that could be divided into subfields are codes such as a commodity or industry codes where the first digit of the code gives a major category and additional digits provide additional detail.

Codebook Builder
(Windows version)

Bullet For ODBC databases, Codebook Builder has been optimized to speed up processing of condition values, both in creating codebooks and in checking the condition values for old codebooks. The change can result in huge reductions in processing time for large databases that have control variables.

Codebook Builder and Table Builder
(Windows version)

Bullet In Codebook Builder, when getting or editing conditions (unique values) for a control variable, a count of the number of conditions is displayed on the screen. In Table Builder, this count is shown on the "About var-name" screen when control variable information is displayed.

HTML Output
Bullet In exported HTML tables, you can control alignment in data cells by using TEXT masks. For regular masks, the data are still right-aligned to maintain alignment of decimal positions.
Bullet For multi-page tables, there are additional footnote controls. You can request that footnotes be displayed at the bottom of each page rather than only on the last page of the table and delete the built-in footnote that says, "See footnotes at end of table.".

TPL Scripts for Running Batch Jobs
(Windows version)

Bullet You can now set up a script with % substitution arguments. These substitutions let you run the same sequence of jobs for different files by passing file names, or parts of file names, to be substituted in the script.
Bullet For ODBC databases, new arguments let you specify ODBC database information in a script so that you can run the script without being prompted for the ODBC Data Source, user name, or password.

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