[Marc Kaulisch]

As expressed in the Stata-Announcement - I would like to get an option to browse a frame automatically when changed to it.

cwf frame, browse

that would display the frame in the Data Editor. And this should not stop do-files.

[Dylan James-Taylor]

Bit of a long shot, but I'd like help files to include a version history section showing the date and version of Stata in which the command was introduced, along with details of any major updates to it

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

Bit of a long shot, but I'd like help files to include a version history section showing the date and version of Stata in which the command was introduced, along with details of any major updates to it

My hunch on this is that since Stata has never done this, it has been a deliberate company choice to refrain from doing so for at least two important reasons. First, the focus of the manuals is to be exceptionally readable, and a revision history gets in the way of this. Second, when there are major changes made to commands, there is a brief description in the "whatsnew" log which is the proper location for something akin to a change log. Lastly, significant feature changes can be compared between major versions by reading to major release manuals. Not to mention that some major changes, like if a command was rewritten under the hood, may not be documented if its user interface never changes. Would that be worth documenting in your opinion?

[Clyde Schechter]

A limitation to the usefulness of the whatsnew log is that it is organized an chronological documents, and then in (to me) inapparent order within those documents. For the purposes of answering the question "When was command/feature X introduced," we are faced with an O(N) search, N being the number of whatsnew files. Actually, it's O(NxU) where U is the average number of items reported in each of the whatsnew files. This might be a reasonable application for an AI, especially since whatever response AI gives is easily checked in O(1) time.

[Dylan James-Taylor]

My hunch on this is that since Stata has never done this, it has been a deliberate company choice to refrain from doing so for at least two important reasons. First, the focus of the manuals is to be exceptionally readable, and a revision history gets in the way of this. Second, when there are major changes made to commands, there is a brief description in the "whatsnew" log which is the proper location for something akin to a change log. Lastly, significant feature changes can be compared between major versions by reading to major release manuals. Not to mention that some major changes, like if a command was rewritten under the hood, may not be documented if its user interface never changes. Would that be worth documenting in your opinion?

Thank you, these are all good points. I share Clyde's concern in #154 that the current approach makes it hard to track changes across versions – perhaps a better one would be to have a formal change log hosted on Stata.com compiling the various whatsnew pages.

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

A limitation to the usefulness of the whatsnew log is that it is organized an chronological documents, and then in (to me) inapparent order within those documents. For the purposes of answering the question "When was command/feature X introduced," we are faced with an O(N) search, N being the number of whatsnew files. Actually, it's O(NxU) where U is the average number of items reported in each of the whatsnew files. This might be a reasonable application for an AI, especially since whatever response AI gives is easily checked in O(1) time.

This would actually be somewhat trivial (given the size of the problem) if the -whatsnew- logs were actually gpep-able. I'm not aware of a single whatsnew that gives a bigger range of news than from one major version to the subsequent major version.

[Richard Williams]

Bit of a long shot, but I'd like help files to include a version history section showing the date and version of Stata in which the command was introduced, along with details of any major updates to it

An interesting quirk of Stata is that, thanks to the version command, much of it is undocumented. That is, I can say

version 10:logit

but I can't get the help file for version 10 logit.

This can be problematic if you are trying to tweak or understand old code. You may not know what options mean; indeed the syntax may have changed radically. For that matter, you may be using a command that disappeared from official Stata years ago and has no current documentation. Several years ago I was trying to rework some ML code written for version 5 of Stata and it was really difficult because the ML syntax had radically changed and I had no documentation for the old code.

My own solution: I still have every version from Stata 7 on. I mostly just use them for the help files or the pdf documentation.

I think pdf documentation for some old versions of Stata is available online. Making it as easy as possible to access that documentation could be good.

Or, maybe have something like

version 7:help logit

bring up the version 7 help files.

[daniel klein]

FWIW, some of the more radical syntax changes are (un)documented under

help prdocumented

[Bruce Weaver]

I think pdf documentation for some old versions of Stata is available online. Making it as easy as possible to access that documentation could be good.

Or, maybe have something like

version 7:help logit

bring up the version 7 help files.

Although it has not happened recently, I remember Google searches for various commands sometimes taking me to links that included 13 in the URL The 13 signified that the documentation was for Stata 13, and to get the current documentation, one could remove 13 from the address bar and press Enter. That make me curious about whether those v13 documents are still available online, and it seems they are--or at least the v13 documentation for -logit- is still there. In fact, all of the following links worked for me just now:

• https://www.stata.com/manuals13/rlogit.pdf
• https://www.stata.com/manuals14/rlogit.pdf
• https://www.stata.com/manuals15/rlogit.pdf
• https://www.stata.com/manuals16/rlogit.pdf
• https://www.stata.com/manuals17/rlogit.pdf
• https://www.stata.com/manuals18/rlogit.pdf

Version numbers < 13 do not work.

I then wondered if removing rlogit.pdf from those addresses would take me to a general documentation folder for each of those Stata versions, but that did not work either.

This seems like a good place to note that datasets used in the manuals for versions 8 through 19 (and for Stata Press books) can be found here.

• https://www.stata-press.com/data/

Cheers,
Bruce

[Bruce Weaver]

Following up on #159, after a bit more tinkering, I found that these links all work:

• https://www.stata.com/manuals13/r.pdf
• https://www.stata.com/manuals14/r.pdf
• https://www.stata.com/manuals15/r.pdf
• https://www.stata.com/manuals16/r.pdf
• https://www.stata.com/manuals17/r.pdf
• https://www.stata.com/manuals18/r.pdf

I suspect one could change r.pdf to u.pdf to get the User's Guide, etc. One can also use the Subject Index to find links to other documents. E.g., by looking under F in the Subject Index, I found this link to v13 documentation for functions:

• https://www.stata.com/manuals13/d.pdf#dfunctions

So, I think that as far back as v13, most (if not all) of the documentation is available online. What's missing is an easy way for users to find it.

[Pete Huckelba (StataCorp)]

Lots to unpack here but hopefully the following will help:

• https://www.stata.com/help.cgi?whatsnew6
• https://www.stata.com/help.cgi?whatsnew6to7
• https://www.stata.com/help.cgi?whatsnew7
• https://www.stata.com/help.cgi?whatsnew7to8
• ...
• https://www.stata.com/help.cgi?whatsnewtoc
• https://www.stata.com/help10.cgi?logit
• https://www.stata.com/search13.cgi?query=egen
• https://www.stata.com/search.cgi?query=panel+data

In the above, an unversioned help or search query refers to the current version.

Stata released PDF versions of the manuals starting with Stata 11. As Bruce indicates above, those PDFs can be referenced directly by manipulating the URL to include the version like https://www.stata.com/manuals11/r.pdf (versions 11 and 12 are now available).

We'll also investigate a better way to search the PDF documentation by version.

-Pete