st: xstata user preferences, via ssh with X forwarding: any tips?

[Dave Ewart <davee@ceu.ox.ac.uk>]

Hello,

When running xstata remotely over ssh using X forwarding, user
preferences may be stored in

  ~/.stata11/localhost:12.0

where 'localhost:12.0' is the value of the DISPLAY environment variable
for that session.

Next time one logs in, DISPLAY will probably be different, so xstata
looks for settings in, say,

  ~/.stata11/localhost:15.0

This means, in effect, that xstata does not reliably save settings from
one session to next which is rather annoying.

I am aware of two possible workarounds:

1. Make use of the Open/Save preferences facility: this will allow all
of a user's settings to be loaded; however it must be run manually at
the start of each session.  Also, one must remember to manually *save*
new settings too;

2. Engineer some complicated script which will endeavour to keep the
contents of

  ~/.stata11/localhost:1.0
  ~/.stata11/localhost:2.0
  ~/.stata11/localhost:3.0
  ~/.stata11/localhost:4.0
  ~/.stata11/localhost:5.0
  [...]

synchronised.  This is a bit hacky, to be honest, and might be hard to
maintain.

What I'd really like is some means of doing one of the following two
things:

1. Ideally, change xstata's settings path to something I choose -
specifically so that it doesn't include the DISPLAY setting and is fixed
from session to session.  Is that possible?

2. Find a command-line equivalent of the 'Open/Save Preferences'
operations so that they could be included in a startup profile.do
command sequence.  Documentation suggests nothing like this exists, is
that true?

All suggestions welcome...

Cheers,

Dave.

-- 
Dave Ewart
davee@ceu.ox.ac.uk
Computing Manager, Cancer Epidemiology Unit
University of Oxford / Cancer Research UK
N 51.7516, W 1.2152
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