st: ADO file to graph using features of the default scheme

["Brent McSharry" <brent@focused-light.net>]

I am using Stata/IC 10.1 for Windows.

I am writing an .ado program in which several models are plotted  on a 
twoway graph, plotting each model's observed against expected outcome, 
divided into quantiles of risk (a graphical hosmer lemeshow goodness of 
fit - displaying 1 or more models) . Each model will have a scatter markers, 
rcap (denoting confidence interval), line (of best fit, frequency weighted) 
and label (stating the number of observations in that quantile). Thus 3 
different plot types are associated with each model. I would like each model 
(and the associated 3 different plot types + marker label) to have the same 
color, and each new model to have a different colour (or grayscale) for all 
of its associated plot types.

One solution I can see is to create a macro with the names of the colors to 
cycle through (for each model), and assign the same color option in turn to 
each plot type eg:
local colorcycle red blue green ...
forvalues i=1/`novars' {
   local coloroption: word `i'  of `colorcycle'
   local scatmac `scatmac' (scatter..., mcolor(`coloroption'))
   local rcapmac `rcapmac' (rcap..., lcolor(`coloroption'))
   }

Another is to create a scheme file with the same colours in turn for each 
plot type eg:
p1line red
p2line blue
p1scatter red
p2scatter blue

However, either option will negate the users default scheme (and the second 
option is not as useful for distributing the ado file to other users). Is 
there any way in Stata to find the color p1 p2 p3 etc in the scheme which is 
active at the time of execution of an ado file?

Thankyou very much

Brent McSharry
Auckland, New Zealand 

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