st: re: Stata Technical Bulletin

[Kit Baum <baum@bc.edu>]

Nick Winter said, in re manuals in PDF format,

My sense of the flavor of comments when this comes up are

(1) StataCorp says nothing

(2) Users speculate that StataCorp is unlikely to do this, as manuals
are an important revenue stream for StataCorp, and once they exist as
PDFs they will inevitably be floating around on the internet.

(3) Users also note that the online help is vast.


StataCorp staff _have_ spoken on numerous occasions to this point at  
the "Wishes and Grumbles" session at SUG meetings here and abroad.  
Their bottom line answer is that this will not happen, as there is  
(re (2)) no way to secure the PDFs. However, in what I take as a  
response to users' concerns, StataCorp have enhanced the on-line help  
considerably to include, for instance, the important information on  
the return values provided by each command (material that used to  
only live in the manuals). Nevertheless, there are manuals which  
every user should have access: particularly the Users Guide, Data  
Management manual and if using Mata, the Mata manuals. Those are very  
worthwhile investments.

Someone asked earlier if the web version of the online help is the  
same as available in the program. With the exception of the  
hyperlinks missing from the web version, I believe that is the case.

Kit

Kit Baum, Boston College Economics and DIW Berlin
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata:
http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html


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