David Airey <[email protected]> wrote:
For the record, Stata 10 for OS X copies graphs to the Finder
clipboard as PDF. For some applications this doesn't paste at all,
and
that behavior is not satisfying I agree. For example, pasting works
fine into Apple Pages and Microsoft Word, but Apple Mail does not
recognize the clipboard contents. Apple Mail will paste if you choose
Paste and Match Style or Past as Quotation rather than plain Paste.
The Apple Finder clipboard also doesn't recognize what is on the
clipboard after copying a graph from Stata, if you Show clipboard in
the Finder. Remember you can change what goes onto the clipboard in
the Stata general preferences such that is PICT. If you do that, you
can past anywhere, but then you get PICT not the better PDF. Also,
the
Finder clipboard does recognize what is on the clipboard if you copy
as PICT (it says and shows a picture). All this seems a little buggy
to me, either in the Finder or in Stata for Mac. I think it is Stata,
because if you have a PDF open in Preview, and you copy, you get a
picture in the Finder clipboard no problem.
Apple has been encouraging developers to switch to the PDF format for
Clipboard data for some time yet they have been inconsistent in how
they treat
data from the Clipboard. The Clipboard viewer, for some reason,
still cannot
display PDF data. The reason you see an image in the Clipboard when
you copy
a PDF from Preview is that Preview copied the PDF data, a TIFF
representation
of the PDF data, and PICT data to the Clipboard. I can't explain
why Mail
does not simply paste the PDF data from the Clipboard. It seems
like a
strange oversight to me since it's very simple for Cocoa
applications to
convert PDF to TIFF.
Stata currently copies either PDF data or PICT to the Clipboard. In a
future update, Stata will copy both PDF data and PICT data to the
Clipboard.
This will allow applications that still don't support pasting PDF
data to at
least paste in PICT data. For technical reasons, a TIFF
representation
won't be included.
While investigating a user's issues with importing Stata graphs, I
observed
a few shortcomings in importing vector graphics in general into
OpenOffice.
The short version is that it can't import PDF, converts PICT to bitmap
(inconsistently at that), and can't display or print EPS files that
don't
contain a TIFF preview. The reason I say OpenOffice is inconsistent
with
importing PICT is that I got different results when pasting in a
PICT image
and inserting a PICT file of the same image.
I also looked at NeoOffice but it has it's share of shortcomings
too. It will
import PDF data but it too converts the vector graphics to bitmap
graphics,
then scales the image to fit the page. This can cause the image to
look
really blurry. However, it will display and print an imported EPS
file
regardless of whether it includes a TIFF preview or not.
This is not an official endorsement of NeoOffice by me or StataCorp
but my
initial observation is that for the best output of Stata graphs, I
recommend
you use NeoOffice and import Stata graphs exported as EPS files. I
definitely
don't recommend using copy/paste if you want to print graphs from
NeoOffice or
OpenOffice.
Unfortunately, Microsoft Office will not open a document saved by
NeoOffice
that has an embedded EPS file. If the goal is to create a document
containing
a Stata graph using either OpenOffice or NeoOffice and is compatible
with
Microsoft Office, then I suggest using NeoOffice and importing a
bitmap (by
pasting from the Clipboard or inserting an image on disk).
PS. Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac supports pasting PDF data
from the
Clipboard. However, it converts all rotated text to horizontal text.
PS2. To get around the blurry scaling issue when pasting a graph
from Stata to
NeoOffice, increase the xsize and ysize of your Graph. When
converting a
Stata graph in the PDF format to bitmap, NeoOffice converts the
image size
from inches (Stata's graphs default to 5.5in x 4in) to pixels using
the
conversion metric of 72 dots-per-inch (DPI). To get twice as much
pixel
resolution, you would use an xsize of 11 and ysize of 8. If the
image is too
wide, NeoOffice will scale it down which is OK. The goal is to make
the image
larger so that NeoOffice doesn't have to scale up.
-Chinh Nguyen
[email protected]
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