Sam brings up several topics. Most of them concern Statalist in general and
I won't enter in the debate on those.
He takes as an example a caricature of my post; there he misses the point.
So far is his reading from mine that I read several posts before realizing
he had, mistakenly, taken mine as an example of his arguments.
1. -graph export- is a Stata command. It is meant by its own nature to work
with other programs. -graph save- exists to save graphs within Stata, but
-graph export- has no purpose unless you plan to open the graph in a program
different from Stata.
2.a. .wmf and .emf are both suffixes supported by -graph export-. StataCorp
would not have made both available if they did not differ one way or
another. I read the manual [G] and searched the internet. I came up with a
conclusion in what they differ. This conclusion might be right or wrong and
I was searching for confirmation on Statalist. The conclusion I reached is
that .emf is better for subsequent editing in other programs.
2.b. There is at least another famous occasion of integration with Stata and
other programs which is dealt almost entirely in this list: text editors
3. The question is not trivially solved by reading the available help. I
received two answers: one by Don (thanks) that suggested a different
program, and one by Michael (thanks) which unfortunately does not solve the
problem.
In my opinion these three points make my post a perfectly valid Statalist
post. But let's come to the true "vision"-divide between me and Sam.
I consider editability of Stata graphs in third party programs a potentially
important feature of Stata. He does not. Or at least he does not want me to
discuss it on Statalist.
Sam does not seem to agree with my desire to edit the Stata graphs outside
Stata rather than using the Stata commands to create directly what I need.
Or, at least, he does not agree with me asking the list how to do it.
As I see it, in spite of the fact that Stata, its GUI, its manuals and
Mitchell's book all are amazing, Stata cannot at the moment rival in speed
and simplicity with software such as Word or Excel in editing graphs.
StataCorp has done an extraordinary job in making all graphical aspects
customizable; there are obvious strengths (uniformity and reproducibility)
and weaknesses (lack of speed) in its hard-coded approach when compared to
the point-and-click approach. Therefore, it would be a Stata strength if its
exported graphs were editable in a point-and-click environment.
For the obvious reason that StataCorp does not have unlimited resources, it
is not necessarily the best interest of StataCorp to prioritize this
compatibility; but it is certainly wise for me to ask to Statalist whether
such compatibility already exists, if I have a reasonable intimation that it
does.
Renzo Comolli
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