New graphic schemes for Stata: plotplain and plottig

While Stata’s computational capabilities have intensively increased over the last decade, the quality of its default graphic schemes is still a matter of debate among users. Some of the arguments speaking against Stata’s default graphic design are subject to individual taste but others are not, for example, horizontal labeling, unnecessary background tinting, missing gridlines, and oversized markers. In this article, I present two new graphic schemes, plotplain and plottig, that attempt to address these concerns. These schemes provide users a set of 21 colors, of which 7 colors are distinguishable for people suffering from color blindness. I also give an introduction on how users can program their own graphic schemes.

尽管Stata的计算能力在过去十年间大幅提升，但其默认图形方案的质量仍是用户间的争议焦点。针对Stata默认图形设计的批评中，部分观点因人而异，但另一些则不然——例如水平标签、不必要的背景着色、缺失的网格线以及过大的标记点。本文中，我提出两种新的图形方案plotplain和plottig，旨在解决上述问题。这两种方案为用户提供了21种颜色，其中7种可供色盲人士清晰辨识。此外，我还介绍了用户如何编写自定义图形方案。