Here is a tip I thought I would pass on. On a -twoway-
plot, whenever an axis shows a categorical variable,
I often want to suppress the ticks, which to me
convey the impression of marks on a numerical scale.
A simple example is
sysuse auto, clear
scatter rep78 mpg, by(foreign)
If you want to suppress the ticks for -rep78-,
then the mind springs towards
scatter rep78 mpg, by(foreign) yla(, notick)
but this does not do what you hope it will, as
the -notick- has no effect.
I owe to Vince Wiggins an assurance that there is
a good explanation for this rooted in the way that
graphs using -by()- are put together, although it is
evidently too subtle to be easily explained.
He patiently pointed out to me that working at the code
to make this possible is hardly essential, given the
possible work-around
scatter rep78 mpg, by(foreign) yla(, tlength(0))
which perhaps struck you immediately as the solution.
There is no doubt some subtle quasi-philosophical
distinction between no tick and a tick of zero length,
but they look pretty similar to me.
So that's it then: -tlength(0)- is a way to suppress
ticks when more obvious methods fail.
Nick
[email protected]
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