Home  /  Resources & support  /  Software updates  /  Macintosh updates

Macintosh updates

Stata 5 for Macintosh — 11 May 1998 update:

Stata for Power Macs
Flavor Filename Size Instructions Update log
Intercooled Stata Stata.ppc.sea.hqx 787k Instructions Update log
Small Stata smStata.ppc.sea.hqx 840k Instructions Update log

Stata for 680x0 Macs (non-Power Macs)
Flavor Filename Size Instructions Update log
Intercooled Stata Stata.68k.sea.hqx 681k Instructions Update log
Pseudo-Intercooled Stata Stata.noFPU.68k.sea.hqx 733k Instructions Update log
Small Stata smStata.68k.sea.hqx 725k Instructions Update log

Special note for 680x0 users: there was a flag that was mistakenly disabled in all 680x0 6 Jan 1997 updates of Stata. Although not serious, users would find that double-clicking a dataset or graph file would not open up the file in Stata. This only applies to 680x0 users, not Power Mac users. Single-click your Stata application, select Get Info from the File menu, and check the creation date. If it's before February 3, 1997, your version of Stata has this bug and you should download the latest update(s) on the website.

Which update do I have installed?

Instructions:

  1. You must already have Stata 5 for Macintosh installed on your computer. Be sure that you are not currently running Stata.
  2. Get a copy of StuffIt Expander if you do not already have it. You can get it from Aladdin Systems, Inc.
  3. Drag your old Stata application (Stata, smStata, or Stata.noFPU) to the trash. Leave the rest of your Stata folder intact!
  4. Click to copy one or more of the files above. If possible, save the file to your Stata folder. If your browser automatically saves it to a default location, you'll have to locate the file before you can continue.
  5. At this point, one of three things can happen:

    • Your browser automatically launches StuffIt Expander and converts the .hqx file to a self-extracting archive (.sea) for you. It then continues by expanding the .sea file into a new Stata application. If this is the case, go to the next step.
    • Your browser automatically launches StuffIt Expander and converts the .hqx file for you. It does not expand the resulting self-extracting archive (.sea). If so, double-click the .sea file to expand it.
    • Your browser saves the .hqx file but does not automatically launch StuffIt Expander. If so, drop the .hqx file onto the StuffIt Expander icon. StuffIt Expander will convert the .hqx file into a .sea file. It may continue with the file and expand the .sea file into a new Stata application. If so, continue with the next step. If it does not automatically expand the .sea file, double-click on the .sea file to expand it.
  6. Move the new Stata application into your Stata folder if it's not already there.
  7. Try Stata. (You do not have to reinitialize your license or reinstall Stata.)
  8. If there are no transmission errors, it will work.

Update log

11 May 1998
  • Under Mac OS 8, clicking on a color in the Graph Colors Preference tab would bring up an alert stating there wasn't enough memory (although cancelling the alert and trying again would bring up the Color Picker as intended).
  • Text edit controls created by the dynamic dialog language would not accept keyboard entry if the control imposed a limit on the number of characters allowed.
14 Oct 1997
  • xtgee, xtpois, and xtprobit have been updated to deal with groups containing one observation (singletons) correctly. This bug was was discovered by Donna Speigelman who reported it on the S-News listserver concerning S-plus. She also wrote,
    "This problem appears to be present in some other versions of GEE solvers (PROC GENMOD, stata xtgee). The problem is NOT present in the SAS IML macro that has been maintained for some time by Dr. Ulrike Groemping."
    We have verified the the presence of the bug in Stata. Estimation of the exchangeable working correlation parameter was incorrect whenever the outcome variable included singletons (clusters of size one). The effect of the bug was to attenuate the estimated correlation in the exchangeable structure. If the proportion of singletons was small, the effect was negligible.

    To address this problem, your Stata executable must be dated at least 14 Oct 1997 (type query born in Stata) and you must be using at least version 3.3.0 of xtgee (type which xtgee in Stata). If your xtgee command is older, download the updated ado-files as well.
  • xtgee has also been updated to change the calculation of the scale parameter. Formerly N was used as the divisor and now N-k is used. Either will work in that any consistent estimate of phi is adequate, but most other implementations use N-k.
  • "tabdisp ... if exp ..." would say "no observations" and then proceed to produce output if no observations were selected.
  • tabulate would fail to present the variable label on some computers when the variable(s) being tabulated were strings.
  • tabulate would sometimes produce a Cramér's V with the sign reversed in 2x2 tables.
  • tabulate, gen() missing would label the variable corresponding to the missing category oddly.
  • cox and stcox could go into an endless loop — which could be stopped by pressing Break — if basehazard() or basesurv() was specified with certain malformed models having coefficients equal to infinity.
  • Constructs such as x1a1-x1a4 for a list of new variables produced an invalid syntax error, r(198). They are now understood.
  • insheet previously required that, if there were K variables in the dataset, each and every record have K-1 delimiters. It no longer requires this. (Some programs, such as Excel, will produce short records when the cells at the end are empty.)
  • Attempts to define value labels with negative values, such as label define yesno -9 yes, produced the error message "invalid syntax" rather than the more descriptive error message "label values must be between 0 and 32767".
  • The programming command parse, parse() now clears all numbered macros. Previously it cleared only the one following the last to be defined meaning that, if the user defined the missing macro, `*' could take on a surprising value.
  • infile now sets the buffer size to 8000 on the Macintosh.
  • stsleep now works properly on the Macintosh.
  • window menu now properly displays dialog titles and checks menu items on the Macintosh.
  • cd by itself no longer displays a return code on the Macintosh.
  • infix using dictionaryname, when the dictionary itself contained a using filename, gave an error message when filename contained an explicit path.
19 Mar 1997
  • infile with a dictionary, when the dictionary specified that lines were to be read out of order, could the read the data incorrectly.
  • Very long, very narrow datasets could cause Stata to crash with a divide-by-zero error if there was insufficient memory to hold the data.
06 Jan 1997
  • The menu programming language (see [R] window) is now included. (We had trouble making it work and, rather than hold up all Macintosh users for this new feature, we shipped Stata for Macintosh without the new menu programming language.)
  • The ability to go directly to Stata's website and pages of interest using your favorite browser has been added to the Balloon help menu. Internet Config must be installed for this feature to be active.
  • The ability to choose between 72dpi and 300dpi for copying graphs to the clipboard or saving them as PICT files has been added to the graph preferences. The default is 72dpi and is recommended for users of Word.
  • Double-clicking in the variables box in the Editor with data in memory now brings up the variables dialog.
  • The Help window properly resets the vertical scroll position when following links.
  • Graphs copied to the clipboard or saved as PICT files are outputted at 6" x 4" again.
  • The function keys are working again.
  • cd typed by itself no longer returns a garbage return code.
  • The Command window no longer resizes back to one line after selecting a new font size when it is multi-line capable.
  • cox, logit, probit, and regress, when used with a by prefix and pweights, no longer switch to aweights after the first group.
  • A oneway tabulate with an if expression and the generate() option no longer fills in random values for observations not selected by the if expression.
  • set maxvar/maxobs no longer gives an error even though it plays no role in Stata 5.
  • table and tabdisp now stop with a no-observations error when they should.
17 Oct 1996
  • Some users found that pulling down the Edit menu and choosing Copy to copy a graph to the Clipboard would sometimes crash their Mac. This would only happen on graphs that contained vertical text. This has been fixed by setting the output resolution to 72dpi.