st: Some questions about editors and directory management

[Malcolm Wardlaw <malcolm@mail.utexas.edu>]

I have a couple of process questions that I wanted to ask the 
statalist.  No rush at all, but I'd like to hear people's opinion, 
especially if they feel they have a solid solution.
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1) Do File Editors:
   It's always perplexed me that Stata has no IDE.  Theres that basic 
text editor for writing do files, but it's incredibly basic and has none 
of the important features that are standard in coding environments, most 
notably markup.  I currently use WinEdt as my do file editor.  It's OK, 
but it's kind of quirky.  It's great for LaTeX, but I feel like at least 
my current configuration is kind of shoddy.

   So, does anyone have what they feel is a really good coding 
environment, or perhaps a really intuitive and reliable WinEdt setup?
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2) Directory Management
   Is there a standard protocol for managing data directories?  I often 
keep multiple different "original" datasets in directories on my 
computer (a windows box, by the way.)  I also try to keep my programs 
and log files in separate directories based on the project.  I then have 
my do files immediately send the working directory to "c:\data" and 
query or write logs and final output back to those directories by path.

   This causes two problems which are not serious, but kind of 
annoying, especially if I am executing only part of a do file.  The 
first is that the paths are sometimes unwieldy and I lose track of my 
output and logs when I execute a master do file.  The second is that I 
like to keep my programs relatively flexible like SAS, so that I can 
port them to our mega-server without too much search and replace path 
changing.

   To get around this second issue, I assign the directory path to a 
local macro string at the top of the file and then always refer to the 
path by that local macro.  It's a little messy and annoying when 
executing part of the file, since the macro is assigned at the top.  I 
know I could assign the macros globally and keep them around.  But these 
are all hacks I came up with myself, and they don't feel very formal.

   Is there a standard way to handle this sort of thing or a personal 
setup that anyone finds useful?  And by procedure, I mean not just 
fixing my macro issues, but structuring the entire data environment and 
import/export procedures to make this run in a robust and orderly way.
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Any advice on this issue would be much appreciated.

Malcolm Wardlaw
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