Stata The Stata listserver
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date index][Thread index]

Re: st: Adding an editor to your menu system (Jaguar)


From   [email protected]
To   StataList <[email protected]>
Subject   Re: st: Adding an editor to your menu system (Jaguar)
Date   Wed, 26 Mar 2003 16:34:50 -0600

> Having read the link provided below by Nick Cox, I am slightly confused.
> There is an entry for "Adding an editor to your menu system" which says to
> add the following line to profile.do (w/ adjustments for your system, of
> course):
> 
> qui window menu append string "Edit" "&P Pfe" "winexec \program
> files\pfe\pfe32.exe"

> Can you use a similar statement on Mac OS X (Jaguar)? If so, what would
> replace "winexec" in this statement?

Yes, you can use -winexec- but read more.  Also, the window menu command
is different which I'll mention later.

> My confusion arises b/c under the Macintosh Editors section, it says:

> Unfortunately, the Stata commands that permit you to communicate with the
> operating system (i.e., shell, xshell and winexec) are not available on the
> Macintosh. Thus, in order to switch to an external editor easily from within

This statement is no longer true because of Stata 8 (see [R] Shell).  -shell-
and -winexec- are both available under Mac OS X with a limitation.

The limitation is that only Mach-O native applications may be launched this
way, not CFM applications.  I won't bore you with what the difference is but
how can you tell if the application you wish to launch is a CFM or Mach-O
application?  From an OS X command line such as one you'd find while running
the Terminal application, type (for example)

file /Applications/Stata/StataSE

If it responds "Mach-O executable PPC", you can launch it using -winexec-.  If
instead it responds "PEF binary", it is a CFM application and may not be
launched by -winexec-.

> I am afraid I am not tech-savvy enough to understand if this is referring to
> the same capability. As I understand it, the addition to profile.do above

Oh, it gets much worse.  Let's try the TextEdit application located in the
/Applications directory.  If from the Terminal you type

file /Applications/TextEdit

you'll get the response "/Applications/TextEdit: can't stat
`/Applications/TextEdit' (No such file or directory)."

That's because the TextEdit application is what's known as a "bundle" in OS X
lingo.  Even though you see the application TextEdit from the Finder, it's
really a directory called TextEdit.app that contains a bunch of files that
make up the application.  The actual executable is buried somewhere in there.



© Copyright 1996–2024 StataCorp LLC   |   Terms of use   |   Privacy   |   Contact us   |   What's new   |   Site index