[U] User's Guide

26 [ U ] 1 Read this—it will help1.3.10 What’s new in graphics1. A release highlight, text in graphs now supports multiple fonts. You can display symbols, Greekletter, subscripts, superscripts, as well as text in multiple font faces including bold and italic. See[G] text. Everything is automatic, but you can set up the fonts to be used; see [G] graph set,[G] ps options, and [G] eps options.2. Stata’s Graph Editor can now record a series of edits and apply them to other graphs; see GraphRecorder in [G] graph editor. You can also apply recorded edits from the command line. See[G] graph play and see option play(recordingname) in [G] std options and [G] graph use.3. The dialog box for graph twoway now allows plots to be reordered when multiple plots havebeen defined.1.3.11 What’s new in programming1. The big news in programming concerns parsing varlists containing factor variables, dealing withfactor variables, and processing matrices whose row or column names contain factor variables.a. syntax will allow varlists to contain factor variables if new specifier fv is among the specifiersin the description of the varlist, for instance,syntax varlist(fv) [if] [in] [, Detail]Similarly, syntax will allow a varlist option to include factor variables if fv is includedamong its specifiers:syntax varlist(fv) [if] [in] [, Detail] EQ(varlist fv)See [P] syntax.b. You can use resulting macro ‘varlist’ as the varlist for any Stata command that allows factorvarlists.c. Factor varlists come in two flavors, general and specific. An example of a general factor varlistis mpg i.foreign. The corresponding specific factor varlist might bempg i(0 1)b0.foreignA specific factor varlist is specific with respect to a given problem, which is to say, a givendataset and subsample. The specific varlist identifies the values taken on by factor variablesand the base.Users usually specify general factor varlists, although they can specify specific ones. In theprocess of your program, a factor varlist, if it is general, will become specific. This is usuallyautomatic.Existing commands rmcoll and rmdcoll now accept a general or specific factor varlist andreturn a specific varlist in r(varlist). See [P] rmcoll.Existing command ml accepts a general or specific factor varlist and returns a specific varlist,in this case in the row and column names of the vectors and matrices it produces; see [R] ml.The same applies to Mata’s new moptimize() function, which is equivalent to ml; see[M-5] moptimize( ).Similarly, all Stata estimation commands that allow factor varlists return the specific varlist inthe row and column names of e(b) and e(V).Factor varlist mpg i(0 1)b0.foreign is specific. The same varlist could be written mpgi0b.foreign i1.foreign, so that is specific, too. The first is specific and unexpanded.