Your interpolated text "[by Allan Reese]" does not reflect my
intention, or even my meaning. I was referring to the logic
outlined in my own previous post.
More importantly, you're preaching to the converted here.
On your last question, you can uncouple grid specification from
-?label- specification.
e.g.
... yla(5(5)25, nogrid) ytic(10 20, grid)
Note that -notick- is also a suboption of -?tick()-, not
relevant in this example, but sometimes useful.
Nick
[email protected]
R. Allan Reese
>
> On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 18:12:57 -0000 Nick Cox <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > ... I formulated my question in terms
> > of Stata's defaults given -xscale(log)-
> > and how to improve on them in a way that
> > can be automated ... but it would be easy enough to provide
> > one's own default, and the logic would
> > be broadly similar to that outlined [by Allan Reese].
>
> > > Eg yla(0 1(2)7 8.02 "8.02", format(%4.0f) angle(0) labsize(*.8))
>
> I'll briefly reinforce this view, because one of the outstanding
> features of Stata for me is the way you can build and revise
> graphics by explicitly altering features. This is in stark
> contrast
> with the attitude of providing a galaxy of styles and expecting the
> user simply to click'n'choose. It is also in contrast with
> point'n'click editing, which is too often based on "pull it
> about til
> it looks summ't loike", as we say in't north. I want to be able to
> articulate the process of drawing, so that I can (a)
> communicate with
> students or clients (b) have an audit trail to document a
> graph, and
> (c) set up a production line so that all graphs are
> consistent where
> required to be. My attitude has been reinforced by trying another
> program which boasts "templates", but the templates copy only a
> limited, and undocumented, set of features to another
> graph. It was
> most recently reinforced yesterday when writing slides in
> PowerPoint
> and finding the font size constantly changing as I typed or
> when slides
> were saved and restored; that is NOT f***ing intelligent
> software, it's
> just an irritatingly poor tool.
>
> Having worked myself up, there seems an odd lack in the
> grid option of
> Stata8 scatterplot. I wanted fewer grid lines than
> labelled values,
> but grid provides only grid/nogrid, and x|ylines are a
> different style
> from gridlines. That makes it a lot of work when the obvious
> ("well it's obvious to me, sir" Benny Hill) would be
> label(values...)
> grid(values...).
>
> Briefly?
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