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The Little SAS Book, Sixth Edition is now a year old. I have already written posts about What’s New in this edition, and the very cool XLSX LIBNAME engine. So what more is there to say? A lot, it turns out. The Sixth Edition was our biggest rewrite since the Second Edition introduced the new (at the time) Output Delivery System. This post covers a few of the changes you probably didn’t notice–so you can safely ignore this blog post. But if you are curious, read on:
- Default output has changed. You probably are aware that the default output has long been HTML (or SASREPORT in Enterprise Guide). What most SAS users don’t know is that technically it was HTML4, but is now HTML5 (including in Enterprise Guide). A few years ago, the default changed from HTML3 to HTML4. If you didn’t notice the change from 3 to 4, then you probably won’t care about the change from 4 to 5 either. But it was a big deal to us because HTML4 stored images in separate files while HTML5 embeds images in the same files as text. This required us to completely rewrite section 8.12 with its discussion of saving graphics output. That complicated our lives, but it simplifies life for you if you use SAS to create HTML pages with graphics. No more need to worry about links to your graphics files; now your graphics will be saved inside your HTML pages.
- Footnotes are gone (except the few ones under tables and chapter quotes). In an effort to maximize readability, we worked important information into the text and deleted the rest.
- Default ODS style for PDF output has changed from PRINTER to PEARL.
- Some built-in styles have disappeared entirely including one we used a lot, D3D. To see the current built-in styles on your system, run this: PROC TEMPLATE; LIST STYLES; RUN;
- ODS HTML statement requires PATH= in some situations when it didn’t before. It’s complicated so just include a PATH= option, ok?
- PROC REPORT no longer requires the NOWINDOWS option to avoid opening a Report window.
- Some ODS style attribute options have new names. For example, the option FONT_SIZE= has changed to FONTSIZE=, and BACKGROUND= changed to BACKGROUNDCOLOR=. The old option names still work, but the new ones are considered more correct.
- There is a new way to make suggestions for the SASware Ballot. Instead of emailing your ideas, you submit them on SAS Communities.
- Ellis Island National Monument merged with Statue of Liberty National Monument. Also Hawaii Volcanoes National Park lost one of its museums. (The Jaggar Museum was damaged by the eruption of Kilauea.) We updated our data accordingly.
- The SAS family grew. The number of SAS installations increased from 60,000 sites in 134 countries to 83,000 sites in 147 countries.
I admit that most of these are trivial changes for most SAS users, but we pride ourselves on impeccable attention to detail because for programers sometimes the details matter very much.
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