Legend in spmap

[Joshua Smith]

Dear All,

I noticed than Stata uses the same color as the polygon contours to make the contour of the polygon symbol in the legend, when using spmap. Is there a way to change it?

In the attached map, the state borders contours are black and so are the contours around their symbol in the legend.

Thank you!

[wbuchanan]

Which line colors specifically are you interested in changing/not changing.

[Robert Picard]

Joshua, your map looks distorted because you are plotting unprojected coordinates (latitude and longitude). The spmap command (from SSC) does not do map projections but geo2xy (from SSC) can. To install it, type in Stata's command window

ssc install geo2xy

Here's a quick example that replicates the shape of your map and then produces 2 more familiar representations of the contiguous U.S.

* Use the U.S. Census Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles - States
* from http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/cbf/cbf_state.html
* converted to Stata using -shp2dta- (from SSC) without
* Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and U.S. territories and
* create a map with unprojected (lat/lon) coordinates
use "states_data.dta", clear
spmap using "states_coordinates.dta", id(_ID)
graph export "unprojected.png", width(800) replace

* Redo using Google Maps projection (Spherical Mercator)
use "states_coordinates.dta", clear
geo2xy _Y _X, replace
save "states_coordinates_google.dta", replace
use "states_data.dta", clear
spmap using "states_coordinates_google.dta", id(_ID)
graph export "google.png", width(800) replace

* Redo using a USGS recommended projection for the contiguous US
use "states_coordinates.dta", clear
geo2xy _Y _X, proj(albers) replace
save "states_coordinates_albers.dta", replace
use "states_data.dta", clear
spmap using "states_coordinates_albers.dta", id(_ID)
graph export "Albers.png", width(800) replace

The unprojected map looks like

The Google Maps projection looks like

And finally the USGS recommended projection (Albers) looks like

[Joshua Smith]

Which line colors specifically are you interested in changing/not changing.

The contour of the legend symbols only (i.e. the black lines along the blue rectangular in the legend)