How to print the help file in STATA with all the word retained?

[Phuc Nguyen]

Hi all,

When I try to print from STATA help file, I faced the problem of the word at the right part of the page being cut due to the width. Can I ask what do you normally do to print the help file with all the words being remained?

[Ali Atia]

A few experiments with printing to PDF reveal that changing the page size to A3 and the orientation to landscape does not cut off the right part of the page. If you don't have access to A3 paper, a better approach might be to print directly from the manual PDFs, which should have been installed to your machine along with Stata. At the top of each helpfile there is a link which reads something like "(View complete PDF manual entry)." Clicking that should open up the manual PDF to the appropriate page. You can then print the range of pages which contain the specific manual entry you're interested in.

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

Ali's advice about printing the PDFs really is best, as that format is designed for printing. I wouldn't bother fiddling with anything else, but you might have moderate success by copying and pasting text from the viewer to Word.

[Nick Cox]

On the odd occasions I have wanted to do this I just made sure that I resized the Help window first.

[Radion Svynarenko]

Nick Cox there should be a better way of fitting it all on a page than refitting the Help window

[Nick Cox]

Radion Svynarenko Your query is best directed at StataCorp.

My understanding and stance as a user: Stata help files use SMCL. What is displayed from that SMCL source depends on your window size, and if it's small you'll get a mess (which might mean a great number of continuation characters). Resizing so that you see what you (will) get seems a simple matter to me. What do you envisage otherwise?

As someone who's written many help files, the facts that SMCL gives me much control over what is shown, yet takes care of most else, add up to a real bonus. People who write Stata commands -- and also support them with help file -- do need to learn a little SMCL.

Stata can't use e.g. HTML for output because it emits one line of output at a time and there is no notion of a complete document to be displayed: the end of the document is arbitrarily far into the future. I suppose StataCorp could have used HTML for help files, but it didn't.

It's kind of odd -- as long-term users will recall -- that Stata started (almost) with pdf documentation as the manuals (at the outset just one manual). The manuals were printed and then Stata manuals transitioned to not being printed at all, just pdf documentation bundled with the program or online. No accounting for tastes or needs, but I can't recall recently wanting to print a manual entry or part of it.

I occasionally want to print help files: hence #4 above.

Others may be able to correct or qualify or just disagree.