st: Re: A Thought

[Kit Baum <baum@bc.edu>]

This is the mother of all FAQs. It's not going to happen. I would  
like it to happen too, but I can understand the logic behind the  
company's decision not to do it. Other software vendors have had  
significant problems with their manuals in PDF format being posted  
illegally on servers, and once that happens, who is going to buy one?

IMHO Stata's print manuals are significantly more valuable than those  
for many competing products because they contain a huge amount of  
information on the underlying statistical background, links to  
relevant statistical literature, etc. and not just information on how  
to run the command. Putting that information together and maintaining  
it is costly, and I do not begrudge StataCorp the money they charge  
for the print manuals (which as Richard W. says is more than they  
charge for the SW). But unlike many vendors, who sell a base software  
package and then get you in the neck for various "applications",  
"toolboxes", "add-ons" and the like which make useful software 2-3x  
as expensive, Stata sells software that does everything and sells the  
manuals a la carte. I wish every Statalist poster had ready access to  
the manuals so they could consult them about important details that  
are not in the online help (and yes, there are some, particularly in  
the users guide and programming manual). But note that in Stata  
version 10, one very important category of information -- full  
details on the items returned by each command in r() or e() -- now  
appears in the excellent online help as well as in the print manuals.

But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a PDF copy of the Stata  
manuals. And for the vast majority of commands, the version 9 or even  
version 8 manuals are just fine. We 'recycle' them internally and put  
the older versions out for the grad students. If they need the newer  
features, they can borrow the version 10 manuals.

Kit

Kit Baum, Boston College Economics and DIW Berlin
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata:
http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html


On May 5, 2008, at 02:33 , statalist-digest wrote:

> i wish i could somehow return the old manuals and upgrade them to new
> ones at a discounted price....  i don't have a problem shelling out
> big $ once for a complete set but am not willing to do it every two
> years or so.
>
> i know the stata corp is making significant money on the manuals and i
> am not sure how feasible it is, but would it be possible to have
> manuals installed as either html or pdf during the installation and
> have them somehow associated with the serial number so that the files
> would not open on another machine?  the user could type in stata -man
> regress- and an associated page would open in a browser or pdf reader.
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