Printing help files

[Brendan Halpin]

Is there a better way of turning .sthlp files (self-written) into .pdf files than something like the following (assumes unix-y environment):

foreach topic in topic1 topic2 topic3 {
    help `topic'
    translate @Viewer `topic'.ps,  translator(Viewer2ps) replace header(off) logo(off) pagesize(A4)
    !ps2pdf `topic'.ps
    !rm `topic'.ps
  }

This works well enough, but it's only valid in GUI Stata, whereas this is something I'd like to automate (which requires to work in console/batch Stata).

Brendan

[Alan Riley (StataCorp)]

Assuming topic1.sthlp, topic2.sthlp, and topic3.sthlp are in the current directory (prepend the appropriate directory to the filename in the <b>translate</b> command otherwise), you should be able to code something like

foreach topic in topic1 topic2 topic3 {
    translate `topic'.sthlp `topic'.ps, translator(smcl2ps) replace header(off) logo(off) pagesize(A4)
    !ps2pdf `topic'.ps
    !rm `topic'.ps
}

[Brendan Halpin]

Thanks, that works nicely. I had tried translator(smcl2ps) at some intermediate stage, but I must have been doing something else wrong.

Now I have 22 help-files in PDF format, and tomorrow when I realise they are all full of mistakes I can correct and reproduce them without breaking a sweat!

Brendan