[John Mullahy]

Would there be a way to allow negative Mata matrix subscripts to indicate exclusion of rows/columns? E.g.

mata v=1,3,6
mata y=x[-v,.]

would return y as x except for its first, third, and sixth rows. It's easy to program around this, but having the ability to build row/column exclusion directly into the matrix subscripting would be great.

[Sergiy Radyakin]

I would like to see in a future version of Stata the Project files (*.stpr) in text format (currently binary). XML or JSON. This has been requested since the time when they were introduced:
here and here . This would be useful for automatic generation of projects and (more importantly) for versioning of code repositories.

Thank you, Sergiy Radyakin

[Petr Waldauf]

Do you plan an implementation of Generalizability theory?
(Brennan, R. L. (2001). Generalizability Theory. New York: Springer-Verlag)
Regards,
Petr

[Bruce Weaver]

Good suggestion Petr (in #123). That would be a very nice addition for folks who use G-theory. At the moment, many of them rely on old DOS programs (written by Brennan, IIRC), wrappers for those old programs (e.g., https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gstringforum), and macros that sometimes can't handle their particular designs (e.g., https://people.ok.ubc.ca/brioconn/gtheory/gtheory.html).

Cheers,
Bruce

[denversprings]

Ability to create "hot buttons" or bookmarks for favorite menus -- Every user of Stata has some commands that they use semi frequently but not so frequently that they remember the command sequence (or the command sequence may be too complicated to remember). In those instances, they're forced to use the menu system or the help dialog box. For any one user, there may be just 5 or 6 of these that they would like to access more quickly. In my case -- it's the "recode categorical variable," which is rather hidden in the menu system. My recommendation, if it's possible, would be to allow the creation of "bookmarks" or "hot buttons" to one's favorite menus, much like one creates hot buttons for favorite website in one's Chrome browser. Alternatively, maybe allow users to create a customizable menu dropdown consisting of one's favorite menus.

[Ricky Gettys]

Easier way to work between datasets (This is SAS Enterprise Guide's big [and only, in my opinion] advantage over STATA). Providing an interface for navigating between datasets, even if it was a tab at the top toolbar that I could navigate between two projects easier. This would be especially useful for merges, appends, and other basic data manipulation tasks.

It would be an improvement if I were even able to distinguish between open projects easier by naming open windows. But SAS's setup of creating a work database that lets me merge as datasets are opened is really nice.

[Joerg Luedicke (StataCorp)]

@denversprings , please run the following commands in Stata:

window menu append submenu "stUser" "&Favorites"
window menu append item "Favorites" "&Recode categorical variable" "db recode"
window menu refresh

And then have a look at the menu "User" next to the "Statistics" menu.

For permanent use, you can put these commands into your -profile.do-.

For further information, see

help window menu

Joerg

[Bruce Weaver]

I don't recall if it has already been mentioned in this thread, but a command to compute simultaneous confidence intervals for multinomial proportions would be useful.

Cheers,
Bruce

[Henrique Romero]

Could we have a user-defined typing mode in the linux console (overwrite/overtype, i.e. what the "insert" key changes)? The current behavior reverts to insert mode every time a command is issued. This is not how any shell I know of works and is extremely frustrating.

If you're not what I am referring to, this post might clarify it a bit: https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...at-the-console

[Chen Samulsion]

I have a question on Stata's layout. Can we dock do-file editor into command window or just replace command window with the former in main workspace? (This seems likes Matlab layout style versus Wolfram Mathematica layout style.) I used to type Stata commands in command window and then copy the right ones to do-file editor. Although this operation facilitates me to monitor immediately changes in result window, shifts between command window (or the main workspace) and do-file editor is somewhat troublesome.

[JanDitzen]

Just stumbled across this post and maybe someone else already requested it.

I usually write a lot of subcommands for my Stata programs as it helps to trace errors and test. However I sometimes find it frustrating difficult to find those programs in my ado files. When using the project browser, it would be handy if the ado file name could be appended showing all the programs and by double clicking on it, you would jump to the line the program starts.

[Mike Zyphur]

Hi,
After a few years of using Stata, this is my first post to the Stata list. I am running 15.1 and would like to request something for Stata 16 that is consistent with a recurring theme here and my experiences whenever computations get serious (particularly with big datasets, which are becoming the norm in many areas of research):

Faster commands and operations, and better parallelization. Ironically, to setup my subscription to this list requesting greater optimization, I had to interrupt a .do file that had been running for a few hours and was scheduled to run for a few more. A key reason why the .do file and the Mata code on which it is based runs so slowly is because Stata does not automatically detect when loops produce results that are independent and therefore can be parallelized. This seems like a very simple thing to automatically detect. I recognize there's a user-written protocol for this, but it's not optimal and does not work in many circumstances.

For Stata to be competitive it needs to be optimizedm including its looping functions for multiple processing cores. What would be best, of course, is if this was done while taking advantage of the GPU capabilities of most modern computers. Serious computing is being parallelized in this fashion to take advantage of the thousands of processing cores that many workstations now have. Stata should consider how best to keep pace with this so that it can stay competitive.

I can see the appeal of Stata and I appreciate many of its features and functions, but in the long run it will only stay competitive and practically usable if it is optimized in a serious way. Loops should be run in parallel whenever possible by default, and GPUs should be automatically recruited for this and other processes.

Thanks!
Mike

[Sergio Correia]

Loops should be run in parallel whenever possible by default, and GPUs should be automatically recruited for this and other processes.

I agree, but a few caveats:

1) Mata's compiler is not as smart as a C++ compiler (for obvious reasons), so you might benefit from some of these Mata speedup tips: http://scorreia.com/blog/2016/10/06/mata-tips.html
2) The low hanging fruit for Mata speedups would be adding integer types within Mata (so we can use them within loops).
3) Parallelizing operations either with CPU or GPU is a good goal, but incredibly hard and easy to do incorrectly. Perhaps looking at the approach of other languages might be useful (Julia? or is their approach too JIT to be useful?). In other words, I don't think you might be able to get #3 for a while.
4) Have you tried the parallels package? It is not multithreading but multiprocessing, but might help you if you have many cores and CPU-heavy ops that don't require much back-and-forth memory sharing.

[George Hoffman]

i'm wondering if there is any work on, or interest in, using on-the-fly expressions as temporary arguments to commands.
for example, to do a 2x2 crosstab of continuous variable var1 cut at 60 and var2 cut at 70:
tab var1<=60 var1<=70

i think there would have to be an expression delimiter like {var1<=60} to signify generation of a temporary variable, to distinguish from a logical statement.

maybe there is a way to do this currently on a single command line; if so, i apologize in advance!
thanks for considering
george

[Nick Cox]

George Hoffman You can do this with

tab var1 var2 if var1<=60 & var2<=70

but I think you already know that. So, you're asking for more concise syntax.