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Table of Contents A. Quick Start B. Summary of Changes C. Tutorial D. Screens E. Exporting the Data F. Notes on Data Appendix List of Indicators (and Abbreviations) by Indicator Groups Alphabetical List of Indicators (Abbrevations) Countries and Country Groups (Africa and World) Indicators Available for World Country Groups Data Sources and Bibliography Credits

The 1999 edition of SPESSA features several user interface changes. These changes are intended to provide additional functionality, while simplifying the overall user interface. The number of screens has been reduced from five to three. They are: Country/Group Selection screen; Indicator Selection screen; and View Data screen. Each of these screens is described in more detail in the section 5 on Screens (See p. 18). Most screens are now sizeable and maximizable to the full size of the computer screen. The screen known as "Main Menu" in SPESSA-95 served no purpose other than to provide a button allowing users to return to the "Introduction" Screen. Thus, the "Main Menu" screen and its roaming button have been removed, and the Introduction Screen button is now a smaller button, available on both the Country/Group Selection screen and Indicator Selection screen. Function buttons on the bottom of screens are now static and less confusing. Additionally, pop-up help is now available when moving the mouse over any button. The lists of countries, country groups and indicators are now presented as hierarchical lists. These lists can be navigated by clicking on plus [+] or minus [-] signs before Country Group or Indicator Group names to expand or collapse the components. Countries or Indicators may be selected either by clicking on individual Country or Indicator names or by clicking on an expanded Country/Indicator Group name to select/de-select all Countries/Indicators listed within that group. Clicking on a Country Group, which is NOT expanded, will select that Country Group as an aggregate rather that the individual countries within that group. Buttons for two new functions have been added to SPESSA-99: Scenarios and Data Sets. A Scenario is a particular set of Countries, Country Groups and Indicators currently selected for viewing. Scenarios also include information about the style of graph currently being used to view the selected data. The current scenario may be saved to a file, and a previously saved scenario file may be re-opened to change the set of Countries, Country Groups, Indicators and graph settings to those found in the scenario file. A Data Set is a set of user-defined data values for specific country (or country group) / indicator variables, that are different from the original data values for those variables. When a variables data value is edited, the spreadsheet cell containing the edited value has a yellow background color to indicate that it is a user-defined value. Different user-defined data values may be saved to different Data Set files. A Data Sets button allows the user to open a new or existing Data Set file or save the current Data Set file under a different name. The View Data screen makes use of indicator abbreviations to allow more data values to be viewed at one time in the data spreadsheet. Also, non-numeric indicator values, such as "Languages" and "Ethnic Groups" must be viewed by right-clicking on their data cell and viewing the data as a footnote. Variables in different indicator groups may now be graphed simultaneously. Graphed elements may be selected/de-selected by clicking on variable abbreviations in the first column of the data spreadsheet. Additional graph types include pie charts, Gantt, log and area graphs. The spreadsheet and graph data may be sorted according to the data for a particular country (or country group), by clicking on the country (or country group) button above a data column for a country (or country group). Clicking once will sort the data in ascending order; clicking a second time will sort the data in descending order. New data may be added for a non-listed year for any indicator, by right-clicking on an indicator in the Indicator Selection list and selecting the Add a year option. Select the newly added year, along with country (or country groups) of interest, then add data to the spreadsheet cells for the new year on the View Data screen. To un-do a year addition, right-click on the newly added year name and select the Undo year addition option. back a page | next page