The help itself indicates [P] display.
[R] display is just a token entry.
The placement itself indicates two problems.
Putting the entry in [P] arises because
being on top of -display- is important for
Stata programmers; but many users need
to use -display- even if they never write
Stata programs. Conversely, there is a middle-aged
spread problem as Stata matures: keeping each manual
volume at reasonable size is a constant struggle.
The [R] volumes are already fat!
Beyond that, StataCorp are thinking about you
and their thought is that you would find [P]
very useful. I get no royalties for sales
or advertisements.
Nick
[email protected]
Nishant Dass
> Wow! I admire your effort in responding to the query in
> such detail.
>
> Thanks for referring me to -help smcl-; I found "{space #}"
> which worked well for adding space between the two numeric
> columns. (I see "{space #}" is also written into -dlist-.)
>
> One last thing - could you please tell me where could I
> read more about subcommands like "_skip", "_column",
> "_char", etc. mentioned under -display-?
> --- Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > The variable names displayed at left are of unequal
> > length.
> >
> > In contrast I know that I would like the first column of
> > numeric
> > results to be aligned vertically and to be a column in
> > the strict
> > sense. Thus I specify "{col 22}", which is a SMCL
> > directive.
> > See -help smcl-.
> >
> > SMCL is Stata's own mark-up language. The name is a
> > contraction of
> > SMCL Makes Cooler Logs (the documentation is in error on
> > this point).
> >
> > There is an alternative which would be to specify that
> > the number of
> > spaces skipped depends on the length of the variable
> > name,
> > but choosing a particular column is much easier.
> >
> > Also, in this case 22 is empirically chosen, as none of
> > the variable names
> > in the auto dataset is especially long. For other
> > datasets
> > I would need to use a column greater than 22, or to
> > consider
> > abbreviating the variable name.
> >
> > In contrast, for the spacing between two columns of
> > numeric results
> > my use of formats implies that each column (field) is of
> > constant width,
> > so I know that I can just give so many spaces. In this
> > case I do have
> > a simple alternative, which is to specify
> > columns for the start of each field using "{col #}", but
> > that
> > would oblige me to do some arithmetic, which
> > seems too much like hard work.
> >
> > So the laziness of the programmer is paramount here,
> > except that
> > it works.
> >
> > -dlist- from SSC is a moderately simple worked example
> > showing
> > various similar tricks, including also abbreviations,
> > trimmings
> > of leading and trailing spaces, display of variable
> > labels
> > and display of value labels.
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