I guess I spoke for excel/xml users (:-)).
But indeed, I think it has lot of useful
functionalities (eg: adding subtitles like
"HH characteristics", "Head Education" in
middle of columns of results, formatting text in
bold, preparing reading to print tables, etc).
I strongly encourage users to try it.
I'll ask Zurab to post it to SSC for easier
access.
Also, I was a more "outreg" user and would
have missed the power of estout (I tried it
once and felt discouraged by its
complication, compared to outreg).
Best regards.
Amadou.
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Kit Baum wrote:
Amadou suggested that "xml_tab" in some way supersedes estout,
outreg2, outreg, etc. I sincerely doubt that assertion. Programs such
as outreg2 and estout, which I mentioned in my posting of SSC
activity, handle estimation results, tables of descriptive
statistics, and the like in a variety of formats, including HTML, tab-
delimited text, and LaTeX. Ian Watson's -tabout- is another highly
useful routine in this genre IMHO.
The description of "xml_tab" on
http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/
EXTPROGRAMS/EXTPOVRES/0,,contentMDK:20292195~menuPK:546578~pagePK:
64168182~piPK:64168060~theSitePK:477894,00.html
states that "XML_TAB is a program that saves the outputs from Stata
estimation procedures in Microsoft Excel."
This might be useful to some people, but many (including me) make no
use of MS Excel in their scholarly or research work. estout, outreg2
and a number of other user-written procedures have options for tab-
delimited output, which makes their output readable by MS Word or MS
Excel for those that might want to use it.
I would speak more authoritatively about xml_tab, but for the fact
that clicking on the web page above to get its help file yields
"Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at
siteresources.worldbank.org."
And within Stata, a "net from" command fails:
. net from
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPOVRES/Resources/
remote connection failed -- see help r(677) for troubleshooting
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPOVRES/Resources/ either
1) is not a valid URL, or
2) could not be contacted, or
3) is not a Stata download site (has no stata.toc file).
r(677);
The explicit command given on the web page above, indicating how to
install xml_tab from their site, doesn't work either (generating the
same error 677).
So I am not sure that the site is usable in its present form for
those outside the World Bank. I can 'net from' a number of other
sites without difficulty, so I imagine the problem is with the World
Bank's firewall; like the IMF, they are (justifiably) security-
conscious.
And 'findit xml_tab' doesn't...
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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