st: Non-overlapping scatter mlabels

[<Stefan.Gawrich@hlpug.hessen.de>]

Dear Statalisters,

I do a lot of batch processing of graphs and want to add some scatterplots to my output. 
Non-overlapping marker labeling has always been an issue in scatterplots and I'm thinking about ways to reduce the risk of overlapping.
 
In many cases manual specification of the "mlabposition" option within -scatter- might be sufficient to avoid overlaps.
For batch creation of graphs here has to be an algorithm for this. I will start working on this.

Even more advanced ways may also consider option "mlabgap" or even different x and y scatter values for label display.


Here's an difficult example:

sysuse auto if rep == 3, clear
scatter mpg trunk || scatter mpg trunk , msymbol(i) mlabel(make) mlabsize(*.7)


Has anybody ever worked in that direction? I didn't find anything.

Best wishes
Stefan Gawrich
Dillenburg
Germany



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