Appearance packages - schemes

"Schemes specify the overall look of a graph"

More correctly, this should say that schemes specify what individual elements
of a graph look like - the font size of a title, the marker color of the
first plot, the width of axis lines, etc.

Click anatomy below and note that we can change almost every aspect of
what appears on this graph from a scheme.

. anatomy

o Schemes are simply lookup tables

When a graph element needs to draw itself, it asks the current scheme
how it should look.

o Let's build a scheme -

Now, let's draw a graph using the default scheme and our new scheme.

. sysuse auto , clear

. scatter displ length weight

. scatter displ length weight , scheme(ourscheme0)

o Let's build a better schemes -

And draw our graph with it.

. scatter displ length weight , scheme(ourscheme)

o How do we know what does what?

whelp scheme files (forthcoming)

Note that our new schemes now appear in graph dialog boxes in the drop-down
lists for schemes on the overall tab. So long as they are stored in your
ado search path they will be completely integrated into the
graphics system. You can see that on the overall tab of the
twoway_overlay dialog box.

. db twoway_overlay

The economist scheme is particularly distinctive. Note how many things
change in the two dot charts below.

. graph dot weight , over(rep78) over(foreign)

. graph dot weight , over(rep78) over(foreign) scheme(economist)

For another example, try the two scatter plots below.

. scatter displ length weight

. graph display , scheme(s1rcolor)

Note that our scheme can be used for all graphs without the need to add the
scheme(ourscheme) - try clicking the following two commands

. set scheme ourscheme

. scatter displ length weight

We can make ourscheme the default scheme for all future Stata sessions,
by adding the option permanently to the set scheme command.

. set scheme ourscheme , permanently

. set scheme s2color , permanently

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