> > Eric G. Wruck
> >> Is it possible to install a new symbolstyle (symbolstyles are the
> >> circles, triangles, squares & so forth that can be used to mark
> >> observations in a graph)? If so, how does one go about doing so?
Michael Blasnik wrote:
> I'd like to expand a little on Nick's 1st suggestion. You can actually get
> at quite a variety of symbols by defining a variable that contains the
> symbol you want and using marker labels. It takes some experimentation,
> but if you can find a font that has the symbol you want, you can usually
> get it into a Stata graph as the marker. For example, I found that
> char(186) is the paragraph symbol in my default font, so:
>
> gen str1 c186=char(186)
> gr tw scatter mpg weight, mlab(c186) mlabpos(0) msym(i)
>
> The resulting graph uses the paragraph symbol instead of a regular marker.
> If you want to access some more esoteric symbol that isn't in the default
> font's character set, you can change the font used in the graph window by
> using Graph-Preferences.
Nick Cox wrote:
> You can
>
> 1 use printable characters within marker label variables
>
> 2 -separate- into classes and use e.g. different colours
> or grayscales
>
>and
>
> 3 experiment with overstriking existing symbols.
>
> (snip) I think those are the only alternatives.
>
> The experiments I have seen on 3 were not encouraging,
> but this revolves partly on matters of taste.
Just for completeness here are the experiments with overstriking existing
symbols. Besides the taste-issue, one problem is to get a legend for the
"new" symbols (and this also applies for Michaels suggestion). The
code-snipped below uses "legend-graph" as a workaround. This however is "at
best, a kludge", as Nick pointed out in a private email exchange.
----------------------------------------------------------------
sysuse auto, clear
separate mpg, by(rep78)
// The Data-Graph
sc mpg1 mpg2 mpg3 mpg3 mpg4 mpg4 mpg5 mpg5 weight, ///
ms(Oh O Oh o Oh + O +) ///
mcolor(black black black black black black black white) ///
msize(*1.5 *1.5 *1.5 *.5 *1.5 *1.5 *1.5 *1.5) ///
legend(off) name(g1, replace)
// The Legend-Graph
tw scatteri 2 1 (3) "Very Low", ms(Oh) mcolor(black) msize(*1.5) ///
|| scatteri 2 2 (3) "Low", ms(O) mcolor(black) msize(*1.5) ///
|| scatteri 2 3 (3) "Intermediate", ms(Oh) mcolor(black) msize(*1.5) ///
|| scatteri 2 3, ms(o) mcolor(black) msize(.3) msize(*.5) ///
|| scatteri 1 1 (3) "High" , ms(Oh) mcolor(black) msize(*1.5) ///
|| scatteri 1 1, ms(+) mcolor(black) msize(*1.5) ///
|| scatteri 1 2 (3) "Very High", ms(O) mcolor(black) msize(*1.5) ///
|| scatteri 1 2, ms(+) mcolor(white) msize(*1.5) ///
|| , legend(off) xscale(off range(0.5 4.5)) ylabel(, nogrid) ///
yscale(off) fysize(10) fxsize(80) name(g2, replace)
graph combine data legend, rows(2) iscale(*1.3)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
many regards
uli
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