reading minitab mtw files?

[Brian Blais]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone knew how to read a minitab dataset file in python? I did the typical googling, with no results. I'm on a mac, and minitab doesn't run on that platform. I can't even find a description of the file format to write my own reader!

Any ideas?

Brian Blais

--
Brian Blais
bbl...@gmail.com
http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais
http://brianblais.wordpress.com/

[Skipper Seabold]

On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 2:59 PM, Brian Blais <bbl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone knew how to read a minitab dataset file in python?  I did the typical googling, with no results.  I'm on a mac, and minitab doesn't run on that platform.   I can't even find a description of the file format to write my own reader!

I take it it's a binary format? If you can find a description in the documentation somewhere I'd be willing to help write a binary reader, but I haven't come across a description anywhere. 

This commercial software will do the job...

http://www.stattransfer.com/

Skipper

[Skipper Seabold]

The R package foreign will do this, so the format must be published somewhere.

http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/foreign/index.html

Skipper

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

Though - that seems to be the 'mtp' - minitab portable format?

The pdf for 'foreign' has the rather alarming sentence:

"This function was written around 1990 for the format current then.
Later versions of Minitab seem to have added to the format"

and give as a reference only the minitab home page.

Cheers,

Matthew

[Nathaniel Smith]

But of course it's also possible that the "somewhere" is the source
code to the "foreign" package... :-)

-n

[josef...@gmail.com]

I've also seen a statement that the .mtw binary format depends on the
operating system.

Josef

>
> Cheers,
>
> Matthew

[Skipper Seabold]

Indeed. But as Matthew pointed out, and I discovered, you might need a time machine for it to be useful.

I e-mailed their customer support, but I'm not holding my breath. 

I may have access to StatTransfer, if you really need it, and you don't have a very strict timeframe... You can e-mail me off-list.

Skipper

[Skipper Seabold]

Heh. Reply from their customer service sounds about right.

"We do not have this information available. The format is rather complex and would be very difficult to document. I don't know if this helps, but Minitab can import and export XLS and XLSX files."

Skipper 

[Vincent Arel]

To complex to document, but not to use and document. This is hilarious.

[josef...@gmail.com]

It's like python, the specification is the cpython implementation. :)
(maybe it has changed)

Josef

[Skipper Seabold]

Heh, maybe the open source world has skewed my expectations, but in addition to the documentation I also would've accepted "Here's the implementation. Figure it out."

Skipper