{smcl}
{* 04may2004}{...}
{hline}
help for Vince Wiggins' graphics talk at the 2004 NASUG meeting
{hline}

{title:Description}

{p 3 3 2}
The talk was given from within Stata using SMCL to present information and run
commands, do-files, and programs.  If the talk has been installed on your
system, an annotated version of those files is located in your personal
directory (see help {help sysdir}) in the subdirectory {bf:boston04grtalk}.

{p 3 3 2}
The SMCL "slides" in the talk are interactive.  Click on the commands in
sequence to see the demonstrations.  Click on the {help bgrtalk:>>} to move
forward a slide or on the {help bgrtalk:<<} to move backward a slide.  You
can also click on the {help bgrtalk:index} to see a table of contents of
slides and index of associated files.  The annotations are shown in italicized
standard text.

{p 3 3 2}
A few slides have digressions that are not on the sequential path.  Such
digressions are seen as {help bgrtalk:>>{it:something}} and lead you to a
slide where the only return is {help bgrtalk:<<}.

{p 3 3 2}
The index slide contains links to ancillary slides that were not shown in the
original talk and are not on the sequential path through the talk.  They can
be accessed only from the index.

{title:Installing the talk}

{p 3 3 2}
Before running the talk, you must install the talk; type,

	. {cmd:bgrtalk}

{p 3 3 2}
to install the talk.  The talk is always installed in your personal ado
directory, as identified by the {help sysdir} command, in a subdirectory named
{bf:boston04grtalk}.  You can update the materials for the talk by typing

	. {cmd:bgrtalk , update}


{title:Running the talk}

{p 3 3 2}
To run the talk you must be in the {bf:boston04grtalk} directory.  

{p 3 3 2}
To change Stata to that directory, 
{stata cd `"`c(sysdir_personal)'/boston04grtalk"':click here}.

{p 3 3 2}
To begin the talk {view cover1.smcl:click here}.


{title:Some notes on formatting}

{p 3 3 2}
This will be of interest primarily to those wanting to use these materials as
a model for lectures or other talks.  If you just want to see the material,
what follows can be safely skipped.

{p 3 3 2}
When this talk was presented, the viewer was set to make the "slides" look
their best and be large enough to see from the back row.  The viewer font was
set to a large point size {c -} 20 points {c -} and the fontface supported
bold and italic styles.  The colors and style of text for links, results, and
other types of text was also reset.  While not required for viewing the talk,
these settings make the slides somewhat prettier.

{p 3 3 2}
To change the viewer font under MS Windows, click the window icon in the upper
left corner of the viewer and select {cmd:font} from the menu.  On the
Macintosh, the font can be changed from the {cmd:Prefs} menu.  On all variants
of Unix and Linux, the fonts can be changed from the general preferences
dialog box under the {cmd:Prefs|General Prefs} menu.  Select {cmd:Viewer} of
{cmd:Window} then {cmd:Viewer} in the resulting dialog box (depending on
operating system).

{p 3 3 2}
All of the settings for the style of text can be set from general preference
dialog box for the viewer (which can be accessed as described above).  Here
are the settings used for the presentation.  You can start from any of the
custom schemes; we started from {cmd:Custom 1}.

      {dup 56:{c -}}
                     {dup 8:{c -}} Color {dup 8:{c -}}
      text type           RGB      color      bold  underlined
      {dup 56:{c -}}
      Results        255 255   0  yellow        no      no
      Standard       190 190 190  lt. gray      no      no
      Error          255   0   0  red           no      no
      Input          255 255 255  white        yes      no
      Link           255 255 255  white        yes      no
      Hilite         255 251  91  dk yellow    yes      no
      Background       0  92 121  dk navy
      {dup 56:{c -}}

{p 3 3 2}
Note that colors are reported in 0-255 RGB values, as set under Windows.
Macintosh, Unix, and Linux systems accept RGB values on a 0.0 to 1.0 scale and
the RGB values above must be scaled accordingly.