st: RE: percent symbols in catplot

["Nick Cox" <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

Eric started a thread under this heading which featured various
exchanges with Martin Weiss. 

Replying to the original question: I am the author of -catplot-. The
main issue is that -catplot- is purely a wrapper for -graph bar-, or
-graph hbar- or -graph dot-, one of which is called depending on
whatever is specified. 

In Eric's example -graph bar- is invoked. I confirm that I don't know a
way to do this with high-level commands, as -graph bar- doesn't offer
any such handle.

A similar graph is possible with -tabplot- from SSC, at present with a
kludge 

sysuse auto, clear
contract rep78, perc(_perc) nomiss
gen toshow = string(_perc, "%3.2f") + "%"
tabplot rep78 [aw=_perc] , showval(toshow)

That kind of thing is much easier as -tabplot- is based on -twoway-. 

I have previously resisted the idea of being able to add "%" signs
everywhere. Isn't a specification of percent on the graph margins
sufficient? However, I'd add such an option to -tabplot- if it were
clear that there were people who really wanted it. 

Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 

Eric Booth

I am using -catplot- (from SSC) on Stata 11 MP for Mac OSX.  I'd like to
show the percent sign in the label for each of the category bars when
using the "percent" option.

For example, 
****
webuse auto, clear
catplot bar rep78,  percent blabel(bar, position(outside) format(%9.1f))

**or**
catplot bar rep78,  by( for)  percent blabel(bar, position(outside)
format(%9.1f))
****
shows the percent of each rep78 category out of 100, but I can't get it
to show the % sign, so it could say "43.5%", etc.

Using graph editor, I found that I can add a % sign to the bar label
text manually (though I'd rather not have to do that for many graphs),
but after looking through the barlabel options help documentation, I
couldn't figure out how to change the bar label automatically.  (I had
the idea that if I could override the bar labels like you can the text
for a key in a legend then I could calculate and substitute these values
into the -catplot- command in a loop, but I haven't found a way to do
this using the barlabel option)

Another option might be to write something that automates those graph
recorder grec file changes (ex:  when I add the "%" by hand, it issues
the command:

.plotregion1.barlabels[3].text.Arrpush 43.5%

in the recording), but this is a pain.  Any suggestions?

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