st: RE: RE: Special characters in Stata graphics

["Schaffer, Mark E" <M.E.Schaffer@hw.ac.uk>]

Kit's reply didn't make it to the list (Marcello's anti-spammer is
feeling zealous today), so here it is - a very roundabout route across
the Charles River!

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Kit Baum <kitbaum@mac.com>
> Date: December 13, 2006 9:21:31 AM EST
> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> Subject: special characters in Stata graphics: what Stata needs...
>
> If you contrast
>
> help macfonts
> with
> help winfonts
>
> it does not appear that you can change _any_ font in Mac OS X. That is

> indeed unfortunate and rather ironic, as Macs had font management (and

> Apple invented TrueType) when PC users were still staring at white 
> characters on a black DOS screen. Why StataCorp have not seen fit to 
> provide this flexibility in Mac OS X I do not know, but I wish they 
> would.
>
> But font flexibility, for the sake of producing publication-ready 
> materials, is not really an issue of being able to modify the font 
> used to display a specific Stata window. It is the ability to direct 
> Stata to use particular Unicode (or at least UTF-8) characters in any 
> output mode, including the Results window, log files, graph windows, 
> etc. We never will find all the characters we need to handle 
> scientific output within a single 256-character font. We need a 
> directive like {ucode 0381} or {utf8 ce81} that would allow us to 
> refer to GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA without having that be represented 
> in the default font (but available on a system- accessible font).
>
>
> Kit Baum, Boston College Economics
> http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
> An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata:
> http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu 
> [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of 
> Schaffer, Mark E
> Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2006 1:09 PM
> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> Subject: st: RE: Special characters in Stata graphics
> 
> Kit,
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> > [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Kit Baum
> > Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2006 12:58 PM
> > To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> > Subject: st: Special characters in Stata graphics
> > 
> > Nick's advice from Stata Tip 6
> > 
> > Let us see how this works by considering the problem of inserting 
> > awkward characters in your Stata graphs, say as part of 
> some plot or 
> > axis title. Some examples of possibly useful characters are
> > 
> > char(133) ellipsis
> > char(134) dagger
> > char(135) double dagger
> > char(169) copyright
> > char(176) degree symbol
> > char(177) plus or minus
> > char(178) superscript 2
> > char(179) superscript 3
> > char(181) micro symbol
> > char(188) one-fourth
> > char(189) one-half
> > char(190) three-fourths
> > char(215) multiply
> > ...
> > 
> > is Windows-specific. These are not the correct mappings for 
> Mac OS X.
> > Furthermore one cannot change the default font used for a 
> given Stata 
> > window type in Mac OS X.
> 
> Do you mean that in Mac OS X you can't change the default 
> font, or that you can't change the font at all?
> 
> I ask because the advice I offered about Cyrillic becomes 
> unworkable if the font for the results window can't be changed.
> 
> --Mark
> 
> > Stata Tip 6 failed to
> > mention that the proposed approach is platform-specific.
> > 
> > 
> > Kit Baum, Boston College Economics
> > http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
> > An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata:
> > http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html
> > 
> > 
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> > 
> 
> *
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> 

*
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