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Copying Symbols from Clipboard, Adj. Data in Continuation Chart, Queuing and Turning off Animation (XP), Alan's Square Drawtool |
June 15 , 2005
16:34 @Ensign_HA: Welcome to today's training class....
16:34 Sportsrep2: hello Howard
16:34 JsTrstme: howdy
16:34 christophe: hi Howard!
16:34 @Ensign_HA: Many of you downloaded the 06-14 version yesterday and we had a little class yesterday on the new features which I will summarize for this training class. Ask for more detail if you missed yesterday's class and today's summary is too brief for you.
16:35 @Ensign_HA: Since we met a week ago, the following improvements have been made to the debug version. You will have to download the debug version from the Ensign web site or select the Debug bullet on the Internet Services download form if it is showing the Debug version choice.
Copying Symbols from Clipboard
16:36 @Ensign_HA: We added a menu Quotes | Symbols from Clipboard, and this can be used to paste to a custom quote page a list of symbols from the clipboard. Perhaps you have a ASCII file with symbols and you copied them to the clipboard from Notepad. These can then be appended to the end of the custom quote page by using the menu given above.
16:37 @Ensign_HA: Also, some have expressed interest in having a symbol list for the Nasdaq 100, or S&P 100, or S&P 500 or FTSE 100. I have prepared these four lists as custom quote pages, and they can be downloaded using Internet Services form.
16:38 @Ensign_HA: Click menu File | Open | Internet Services. Wait for dates to populate the form, and then use the new Quotes drop down box to select a quote page list to download. Then click the Download button to fetch the file. When you open a quote page with the Q button you will see that the new custom pages have created a tab on the bottom of the quote page which can be selected to have the page.
16:41 @Ensign_HA: Any questions about this new menu Quotes | Symbols from Clipboard or the new download of some prebuilt custom page lists?
16:41 Sportsrep2: nice feature Howard
Adjusting Data in Continuation Chart to Remove Gap
16:42 @Ensign_HA: The next feature that I was able to implement from the backlog of requests is a way to adjust data in a continuation chart to remove the gap between the old month data and the new month data.
16:43 @Ensign_HA: For example, in the ES #F continuation file, it rolled on June 10th from the June contract to the Sept contract. There was a 5.00 difference in price on the roll day. Some users wanted an easy way to remove the gap by offsetting the older June data to match the Sept prices.
16:45 @Ensign_HA: What you do is position the cursor on the FIRST bar of the new data, and right mouse click for pop-up menu Edit | Remove Gap
16:45 @Ensign_HA: Select that menu item and the chart will then mark the Gap that will be removed. The gap would be from the close of the prior bar and the open of the bar marked by the cursor, as in this example.
6:46 @Ensign_HA: The gap to be removed is marked by the shaded rectangle. You will be prompted if this is the intended gap to remove, and you answer the prompt by clicking the Yes button. The data left of the cursor position will all be vertically shifted. The distance of the shift will be the gap that was marked which is the Open of the new data MINUS the Close of the prior bar. Thus the close of the last bar of the old month data will be made equal to the open of the first bar of the new month data.
(Lines will not be shifted that are to the left of the gap.)
6:48 @Ensign_HA: This feature to Edit | Remove Gap will work well with your tick based charts. You may have to edit the low or high of one tall bar that spans both old month and new month to create a gap to shift old month data by. You can edit a bar's high or low using CTRL-H or CTRL-L keys.
6:50 @Ensign_HA: In the past you would have had to do a data set offset using menu File | File Manager | Merge Two Files and then find the file and use it for both the source and the target, enter the offset, enter an ending date, etc.
16:50 @Ensign_HA: While this gets the job done for intra-day bar charts, it is not as easy as the new method. Also, the File merge has a problem with merging tick based charts because they can have duplicate time stamps and this causes two source bars to update the same target bar and miss the 2nd target bar which has the same time stamp. So the new feature is a better way to remove the gap in tick based charts.
16:49 @Ensign_HA: Any questions about using this new feature?
Queuing and Turning off Animation (XP)
6:54 @Ensign_HA: For those using the Ensign Internet version, the current debug version will do an automatic refresh request to bring the chart current just by opening the chart. This ease of having the chart updated may obsolete using the Data Download form.
16:55 @Ensign_HA: For all vendor versions, we implemented queuing of the refresh requests that opening a workspace generates. We noted for IB users that some of the requests were ignored because we fired off too many requests simultaneously. The queue will send a refresh request, wait for the response, and then send the next request. This same idea is now implemented for all vendor versions, and those with big workspaces have already noted that the program is running much smoother by not saturating the CPU and the Internet with simultaneous requests.
6:57 @Ensign_HA: The saturation often expressed itself in symptoms of the CPU being pegged at 100% or with an access violation error in windows system routines for managing system resources. All that is avoided by the queuing of the refresh requests.
16:58 @Ensign_HA: One speed improvement discussed yesterday is to change one of your Windows system properties that deals with animation of windows that are being minimized or maximized.
6:59 @Ensign_HA: From the Start menu, click on the Control panel and you will see a form like this or possibly a directory with System listed. On this form click the Performance and Maintenance link.
16:59 @Ensign_HA: On this form click the System link, or on the directory click the System icon.
17:00 @Ensign_HA: On this form, click the Advanced tab, and then the Settings button.
17:00 @Ensign_HA: On the Visual Effects form, UNCHECK the first box for animate windows when minimizing and maximizing. Then click the Apply button and close the forms. This will be a huge speed improvement in opening workspaces that have several forms minimized.
7:01 @Ensign_HA: One workspace from a user had 42 charts and 30 of them were minimized. Prior to the animation change, it would take 13 seconds to open and refresh his workspace. After I turned animation off, the same workspace opens and refreshes in 5 seconds. Now the windows fly by upon opening very rapidly.
17:02 @Ensign_HA: Also, while working on the queue for refreshing, I also queued up the chart study calculations and chart painting until all charts in the workspace are open. Then studies are calculated and charts are redrawn, then the refresh request are fired off one at a time. The whole process ends up being faster than before because we save repeated repainting of a window over which other windows are being opened and then moved elsewhere on the screen.
17:04 TOC: Howard, I changed workspaces with data streaming at 10:00....worked Great,,,and you know what is going on in my workspace...all charts opened, loaded data, and refreshed, including all the overlays
17:05 @Ensign_HA: Buffy, and others, any feedback after using 6-14 version with the queuing today?
17:05 tt2: HA has anyone else reported that when opening a minimized chart that the bars are missing and/or the scaling is wacked?
7:05 @Buffy2: but it all goes back together tt :-)
17:05 christophe: Howard, when you have several timeframe opened for same symbol, will it refresh/download for each timeframe/ chart ? thx
17:06 @Ensign_HA: tt2, I have a note to check that out more thoroughly
17:06 tt2: thanks
17:06 @Buffy2: Howard it all worked great even when I closed it and reopened Ensign to get that chart back
17:06 @Buffy2: TOC was very happy as he could switch workspaces without a crash - much much faster
17:06 @Ensign_HA: Chris, each intra-day time frame is a separate refresh - for a all charts for a symbol that are based on ticks, a single refresh will be used by all other charts based on ticks.
17:06 christophe: ok thank you!
17:07 @Buffy2: I did things that normally would of gotten me an AV and it didn't with last nights debug version
17:07 tt2: agreed this new version is great
17:07 @Ensign_HA: thanks for the feedback.
17:08 @Ensign_HA: the actions are no different than before, but just the pacing or sequence is what has changed. The changes are targeting saturation of asking the CPU to do more than it can keep up with.
7:09 TOC: Howard...I changed workspaces during a high volume period and it worked great...even refreshed and updated overlays within charts
17:09 @Ensign_HA: I guess a good analogy is too much gets pushed on a stack and the stack overflows. The changes now wait for one activity to complete before attempting the next. The activity content is the same though.
Alan's Square Drawtool
17:10 @Ensign_HA: The next feature worked on from the list of backlogged requests is the Alan Square draw tool.
17:11 @Ensign_HA: Here is an example of the tool applied to the chart of 5 different days. So one can see how well the market is walking the channels and pausing at diagonals and horizontals. The Alan Square is using as a width for the square the space occupied by the day session. The height of the square is determined from the High and Low of the prior day. There are variations on all this, but that is the basic starting point to understanding how the square is made.
17:13 @Ensign_HA: Then diagonals are drawn from the corners and the mid-distances on the sides as shown.
17:14 @Ensign_HA: The tool uses a property form like this, were different lines can be included or removed in the image. On the Right side are check boxes for how the tool operates. Check the Auto Find H/L box if you want the tool to discover the prior days High and Low range to set the box height. And WHEN this option is checked, then the Square Width is used to set the box width, and the number entered is the number of bars in the box...
7:16 @Ensign_HA: In this example, 81 is the width and that is a good setting for a 5-minute chart for ES because there are 81 5-min bars in the day session.
17:17 @Ensign_HA: When the Find H/L box is unchecked, then the corners of the square are determined by your mouse movement when you put the square on the chart.
17:17 @Ensign_HA: Click down at one corner point, such as left side Low, and drag diagonally to the right side High corner. The mouse movement is determining both prices and the width of the square. You can click and drag the diagonal line between these two construction corners to move the box to a different position.
17:19 @Ensign_HA: Other check boxes on the property form will add copies of the square stacked above or below the original square. These additional squares are needed when the market moves outside of the original square by putting in higher or lower prices. On the form, the prices used by the square are in the Price A and Price B edit boxes, and can be manually entered or adjusted.
17:20 @Ensign_HA: For the manual entry, the Find H/L needs to be unchecked.
17:20 @Ensign_HA: Ok, any questions about applying the Alan Square, and any feedback from those who used it today?
17:21 @Buffy2: does it matter which is the H and L --- A or B?
17:21 @Ensign_HA: no buffy, either order. They will populate with the cursor prices and you can draw the box from low to high or from high to low. The first click down will be Point A and the 2nd point where you release the mouse will be Point B.
17:23 @Buffy2: tks
17:23 Terry2: it worked well with the magnet enabled, when I was dragging a non "Auto Find" box. I didn't know about magnet. cool
17:23 cheesesteak: Once you draw the box and save it ....from there on out you just drag it to a chart and move the whole box to the starting candle you want
17:24 @Ensign_HA: good points, guys
17:28 @Ensign_HA: buffy, do you have 10 min example Alan box
17:28 @Ensign_HA: thx
17:29 @Ensign_HA: thx
17:29 @Buffy2: thorough customization with other templates added - oh and pyra in background :-)
17:29 virt: rock and roll, buffy....lol
17:30 @Buffy2: many templates that can be used with Alan's Box - counting bars and 4th HHH or 4th LL, along with marking the type of day are at dacharts template page. Read the description to understand what each does.
www.dacharts.com/templates/index.php
This shows the different results obtained by using 100% - box on left - and using the horizontal - box on right
This chart show box top Square 2 and bottom square 2 checked.
17:28 @Ensign_HA: One last item of change in the program was implementation of printing charts which have new candle types
Training Seminar
17:23 @Ensign_HA: On to another topic, Ensign is having a training seminar with Larry Pesavento as a trainer in July. We need a commitment and identification of who wants to attend today please. So if you had intentions and interest in attending, please step forward and let us know.
17:25 JohnA_83402: any NN people signed up for SLC??
7:26 @Ensign_HA: John is asking if anyone has interest or experience in using Neural Nets and if you are coming to the SLC seminar. John has NN interests, and would like to talk with others on their research efforts.