Dennis: I completely agree with your overall assessment and know that at least several users also completely or partially agree but may or may not respond - so you are not alone. Much has been said through the years on the Yahoo board/AB website/support mail about bugs, "clunkiness", and desired/necessary features. Because of the type of problems that you mentioned (I am also indicator mode oriented), I use the EOD version of AB and then only at "half throttle" because my applications and programming needs are not as extensive as that of a number of other AB users. Like you, I use broker supplied and personal software for RT streaming and charting studies (no "shoe" fits all). These issues, however, are not restricted to AB as evidenced by a recent review on another board where the user compared AB/Metastock/Tradestation/Blocks and ended up (as I understand) with a Blocks package that includes charting/streaming data/EOD data/backtesting/useful standard features - so things are evolving.
Bill ----- Original Message ----- From: Dennis Brown To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 12:12 AM Subject: [amibroker] Study Charting dare I say bugs... Friends, AmiBroker is a wonderful program for many things. In fact I use only a fraction of its total capability for my trading style. I trade only single ticker (futures) real time and write whole trading systems just in AFL in indicator mode. This is actually more like the traditional chart trading that is offered by many brokers. I would expect that AB, which supports all these functions as a very basic operating mode would be at least as good as other charting programs. However, even though the fundamental operations are there (and I think potentially better), the interface (either design or implementation bugs --I don't know which) has made it hard for me to use this product for drawing even basic lines on the charts while trading. In fact, I need a second chart from my broker's application open to the same ticker just so I can draw lines where I want them even though AB would be superior at this if it were not for the bugs. This has been going on with me for over a year now and it is costing me. I have other trading friends that I have recommended try AB in the last week, and I am embarrassed to think what they will say to me when they figure out that these basic features don't work properly. I have actually refrained from recommending AB to them for quite a while -- hoping these things would be fixed first. I don't know how many other traders are frustrated by the same bugs, but if you are, please join the conversation so that Tomasz knows that this is important to you also and perhaps we can get some higher priority on getting the study charting to work properly. Here is a short list of my frustrating bugs --there are others on the suggestions and bug lists, but I am only pointing out the ones that cost profits by either making it very slow to do a simple operation that makes one lose the trade opportunity, or creates frustration and emotion which takes one out of the trading "Zone", or makes the line drawn correctly to become inaccurate causing one to miss the trigger point for a trade. If I have missed any that you feel are costing you profits (not the nice to have pretty things) than please add them to the conversation. #726. Handles from a selected study line are not respected. Often several lines are anchored or pass through the same pivot points. Price levels, Trend lines, Forks, Fibs, etc., often use a common pivot point. However, as a trade progresses, new pivots become more important and the lines need to be adjusted in real time. It is easy to select a study just by clicking on it in a spot where it is unique, and the handles will appear along the line. However, unlike any other charting program I have ever used, clicking and dragging on the visible handle will not usually work properly if any other study crosses very close to that handle. The problem is that AB will grab the earliest drawn study and not the selected one --it will un-select the one you selected and select the oldest one and drag it instead. After playing around for a few valuable seconds trying to grab the right line, I end up having to move the whole line away from its current location and reposition all its handles. Very frustrating and takes the time and concentration away from the trading action. #728. Horizontal price levels do not stay horizontal. The horizontal lines (price levels) do not snap to a bar with the magnet mode on. They just are placed at the cursor level. However, if you click on the line, it jumps to an angled line that snaps to the bar on the left side of the screen. Its operation is just bizarre and causes errors in placement of the price level after the fact. Completely unacceptable behavior for trading. #890. Study handles change when off screen. Lets say you have the magnet on and are zoomed out and draw a trend line between two peaks. Next you zoom in on the trading action so that only the right hand handle is visible on the chart. Now say the prices have advanced to a new peak and you need to adjust the right handle to the new peak (this is a very common occurrence). Most of the time, that handle that is off screen jumps to a new bar position and is no longer on the peak you selected. Of course that changes the slope of the trend line to the wrong one, but you never know it when trading and you end up placing bad breakout trades because the line is in the wrong place now. Completely unacceptable behavior for trading. #990. Drag shadow is on the wrong bar. When dragging a study, there is a thin "shadow" line that shows which bar you have dragged the handles to. However, when the mouse is released, the study gets moved to a different bar than the one indicated by the shadow. This wastes valuable time with two or three attempts to figure out which wrong bar to put the shadow on to get the study to go where you want it. This is an annoyance. And here is one more that I just found today. If I draw trend lines on a one minute bar snapped to peaks, then switch to a 5 minute view, the trend lines are shown on the wrong 5 minute bars. And heaven help me if I select the line in that view, because it will snap to these wrong bars. There you have my short list. Please speak up if these issues affect you. Best regards, Dennis ------------------------------------ Please note that this group is for discussion between users only. To get support from AmiBroker please send an e-mail directly to SUPPORT {at} amibroker.com For NEW RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENTS and other news always check DEVLOG: http://www.amibroker.com/devlog/ For other support material please check also: http://www.amibroker.com/support.html Yahoo! Groups Links ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 8.0.100 / Virus Database: 270.4.1/1510 - Release Date: 6/19/2008 3:21 PM
