Manually installing Blindschemes by Daniel Bischof

[Carolin Thol]

Dear Statalisters

I admit this is a bit of a non-problem, but I'd like to find a solution nonetheless. Never underappreciate a nice graph.

I'm trying to use Daniel Bischof's schemes for making graphs (found here: https://danbischof.com/2015/02/04/stata-figure-schemes/). My organisation doesn't allow installing via ssc, so I downloaded all the scheme and style files and added them to the folder where all my other ado files are stored. I saved the color files both into a separate folder called "style" (this is what ssc does, I think), as well as in the same folder with the scheme files. Now, when I'm setting the color scheme to plotplainblind, the graphs come out in that scheme, but in black and white. The command doesn't seem to find the colors. So, I think I need to define these colors first in some way, but I don't know how. Any suggestions?

Many thanks

Carolin

[Nick Cox]

A graph scheme is nothing but a way to specify defaults. If you want to vary anything, such as colours, the options are still there: you just need to override the defaults that you set up by setting your scheme.

This makes the point:

. sysuse auto, clear
(1978 Automobile Data)

. set scheme plotplainblind

. scatter mpg weight

. scatter mpg weight, mc(red)

PS: FWIW I don't like s2color either. I just use s1color. That gets me most of the way I usually want to go, and as for the rest I need the exercise. I am permanently astonished by the complaints on social media about Stata's defaults, seemingly in ignorance that there are many defaults to choose from and that you can define your own scheme any way.

[Carolin Thol]

Hi Nick

Thanks for that, that will do as a workaround. I'm just wondering how to get the command to use the colours that come with it. When I'm using the colour scheme on my laptop, where was able to install it from ssc, that just worked automatically, and the colours were defined, e.g. vermillion rgb "213 94 0". But now I have to use my work PC, which doesn't allow downloading from ssc, and the colours don't seem to be defined, even though they're saved in the same folder as when downloading from ssc.

Appreciate your time, and I'll try to manually call colours in the command for now!

[Carolin Thol]

Update: Mysteriously, colours are working now. Unfortunately I can't tell why.

[Nicola Deghaye]

I am having a similar problem, even though I used the following:
ssc install blindschemes
set scheme plotplainblind
graph pie ed_psych, over(statssaprov) scheme(plotplainblind)

I get an error specifying that the colours: sky, turquoise, reddish, vermillion, sea and orangebrown are 'not found in class color'.
Any suggestions?