Introduction to Stata 8 - (GRIPS

The profile.do file
[GSW] A7
If you put a profile.do file in the c:\ado\personal folder 2 the commands will be
executed automatically each time you open Stata. Write your profile.do using any texteditor,
e.g. Stata's Do-file editor or NoteTab (see appendix 3) – but not Word or WordPerfect.
// c:\ado\personal\profile.do
set logtype text
log using c:\tmp\stata.log , replace
cmdlog using c:\tmp\cmdlog.txt , append
// See a more elaborate profile.do in section 16
// simple text output log
// open output log
// open command log
set logtype text writes plain ASCII text (not SMCL) in the output log, to enable
displaying it in e.g. NoteTab.
log opens Stata's log file (stata.log) to receive the full output; the replace option
overwrites old output. The folder c:\tmp must exist beforehand.
cmdlog opens Stata's command log file (cmdlog.txt); the append option keeps the
command log from previous sessions and lets you examine and re-use past commands.
Fonts. Window sizes and locations [GSW] 18, 20
In each window (see section 2) you may click the upper left window button; one option is to
select font for that type of window. Select a fixed width font, e.g. Courier New 9 pt.
Adjust window sizes and locations with the mouse; see recommendation in section 2. When
finished, make your choices the default by:
Prefs ► Save windowing preferences
If you somehow lost the setting, you can easily recreate it by:
Prefs ► Load windowing preferences
By default the Results window displays a lot of colours; to me they generate more smoke than
light. I chose to highlight error messages only and to underline links:
Prefs ► General preferences ► Result colors ► Color Scheme: Custom 1
Result, Standard, Input: White
Errors:
Strong yellow, bold
Hilite:
White, bold
Link:
Light blue, underlined
Background:
Dark blue or black
Windows 98 and ME users only:
These Windows versions have restricted capacity for dialogs. To avoid crashes:
set smalldlg on , permanently
2) [GSW] appendix A7 recommends otherwise. I stick to my recommendation; this place is safer.
4