Friedrich Huebler <[email protected]> wrote,
> The new graph editor (STAGE version 2?) looks interesting. Does it
> generate the Stata commands needed to recreate the edited version of a
> graph from a do-file, without the editor? [...]
No, sadly. That's sad because it would be nice to edit one graph, record what
was done, and then be able to apply the same modifcations to other graphs of
the same type.
We looked long and hard at the issue and came to the conclusion that
restricting the editor to doing just things the editor could "understand" (and
so record generically) would overly limit the kind of things interactive
users could do.
Friedrich mentioned STAGE. For those who don't know, STAGE stood for STAta
Graphics Editor and was released at the end of 1989 for use with Stata 2.05.
The fact was, it could edit graphs, but no one would claim it was easy.
STAGE died of incompatibility when Stata 8 was released in 2003. Stata 8
contained all new graphics.
Unlike STAGE, The new Graph Editor really is modern, and even I -- of whom
Nick Cox once said, "When he dies, they will find Unix tatooed on his
heart", and of whom Chinh Nguyen said "Bill's idea of a GUI would be
a giant dot prompt" -- find the new editor a joy to use. (I wrote STAGE and
had little to do with the new graph editor.)
If Friedrich's goal is to create a graph command that he can use on different
variables without learning the -graph- syntax, he will be pleased to know that
the graph-creation dialog boxes are completely rewritten and can do more and
are easier to use. (Dialog boxes in Stata do create Stata commands.)
Coming back to the Graph Editor, what I like is that I can make changes with
just a few clicks and, even for me, what to click is obvious. A problem I
had a few days ago involved changing the aspect ratio. I wanted a square
graph. I clicked on the graph and I typed a "1" in the toolbar presented at
the top of the graph.
-- Bill
[email protected]
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