Multiframe primary bar widths

[roman_ch]

Dear NT team,

I use charts with two dataseries, primary is time-based (let's say, 3 minutes), the other is tick based (say, 100 ticks). Secondary dataseries is transparent. Equidistant bar spacing is off.

Re-connecting, re-loading data or re-starting (etc) causes NT to change primary bar widths/spacing. Needless to say, this is inconvenient: essentially, the charts look different every time they are loaded. Consequently, I need to manually re-adjust them then (but that's not great for consistency, either).

The expected logic is that NT keeps the scale constant (or, more specifically, keeps primary bar widths/spacing constant). What NT actually seems to do is to re-calculate best fit ratio between the primary and secondary data series (obviously, depending on what is on the chart, the ratio of tick bars per minute bar is different) and this causes bar size re-scaling (it is probable that the NT logic is to best fit the time axis and the bar widths/spacing are stored relative to the time scale so are then displayed differently although technically values do not change).

Would be great to sort this out so that NT keep the same primary bar sizes, as expected.

Regards,
Roman

[NinjaTrader_JessicaP]

Hello roman_ch,


I have submitted a feature request to the product management team for the following feature :

This customer would like the ability to lock bar spacing to that used in initial start-up

I will follow up with more information as soon as it's available. If the feature requests already exists, a vote will be added to it.


Please let us know if there are any other ways we can help.

[roman_ch]

Hi Jessica,

Thank you for the post. I do not know how closely developers work with the forum posts (rather than just with the description they get from customer support if at all anything). Now, if they do get the whole message or context, this is fine.

But if they don't, the description is not right. My post is not about adding a new feature. It is rather a change to an NT scaling method. Currently NT continuously re-scales primary bar widths on multi-frame charts with different bases (eg minutes and ticks) when data is re-loaded. It is not what is reasonably expected; and it is something that affects user interface.

Regards,
Roman

[NinjaTrader_JessicaP]

Thank you for the information roman_ch. Developers do closely monitor these pages whenever a feature is requested, so our conversation here is visible to them. Equidistant bar spacing on multi-timeframe charts is a new feature to NinjaTrader 8. The current specified and documented behavior is the one you described. Preventing rescaling ("locking" the way I phrased it) will require new development. Your point that you as a user have a different expectation will be considered by the developers.

[roman_ch]

Jessica,

Thanks. Can you please clarify:

The current specified and documented behaviour is the one you described

Where is this documented and / or specified?

Also re the below:

Equidistant bar spacing on multi-timeframe charts is a new feature

I am not sure you have noticed in my first post: equidistant bar spacing is OFF on these charts. In fact, my point about bar widths would have been totally irrlevant for equidistant bar spacing in the first place.

Please, I kindly ask that if something is unclear in my post, that we get it bottomed out before making conclusions.

Regards,
Roman

[NinjaTrader_JessicaP]

Thank you for following up, I had misunderstood the nature of your report, and had misread your original post as having equidistant bar spacing as being on. As my test showed the same behavior in NinjaTrader 7, we will need to treat this as a new feature request.

Upon reviewing my outbox I have noticed that the request has not been sent as of yet. Would it be possible for you to review the wording of my request and recommend any changes before I send it out?

[roman_ch]

Hello Jessica,

Thanks. My intention in the first post was to provide developers with sufficient information and to describe the consequence. I can guess what is the background to the problem, too: as we know, NT8 is WPF-based, so everything is scaled to the "logical" canvas of the container. Without going into detail, I expect that there are several aspects to what is going on now under the hood and also several possible solutions from the developers, so giving too little information might be a problem.

If a new and a shorter description is needed, then it could be something of the following type:

In non-equidist multiframe charts with different bases (eg minute and tick), time axis device scale to remain unchanged after data reload if user previously had adjusted bar widths/spacing.

As I mentioned, right now, data reload "overrides" user-adjusted scale, which is not valid UI logic. This is why I did not refer to my request as a request for a new feature.

Regards,
Roman

[NinjaTrader_JessicaP]

Thank you Roman. With the understanding that the responsible teams will review this thread, I have amended the feature request to the following and have sent it out.

This user would like user-defined scaling to persist through refreshing a chart

[roman_ch]

Jessica, OK, thank you.

[NinjaTrader_JessicaP]

I have some feedback from the product management team. It looks like we weren't quite able to see the same thing on our end as you were seeing on yours. On our end we performed the following test :

• First series : 3 minute ES 12-16
• Second series : 100 tick ES 12-16, invisible
  • tested in its own panel, and in a separate panel
• Data feed : Kinetick

After entering custom bar widths for each series and refreshing, we were unable to cause bars to resize.


So that I may have a more complete picture of what is happening on your end, would it be possible to use the freely and publicly available screen capture software Jing, https://www.techsmith.com/jing.html , or a similar program which can record video of what is happening on your screen, so that you can show me what is occurring on your end? These quick instructions can get you started with Jing.

1. When you start Jing, a yellow half circle will appear near the top of your screen. Please hover over it with your mouse
2. A small + sign will extend out of this half circle. Please click on it
3. When your cursor becomes two intersecting lines, please click and drag your mouse over an area of your screen you would like to record
4. Please press the film strip button that appears to begin recording
5. When you are finished recording, please press the square stop button that appears
6. Please press the share button that appears. It consists of three vertical upward pointing arrows.

You will then have the option to view your video on screencast.com . This is the link which can help me diagnose what is happening on your end. It is possible you will need to set up a free account in order to share videos.




Thank you very much in advance for providing us with this information. If this procedure is not an option for you, or if there are any other questions we can answer, please let us know.

[roman_ch]

Jessica,

Many thanks, appreciate your/dev team help here. Give me a few days please to run the video and I will also test re-creating workspace on a different machine.

Just in case, I run the secondary dataseries in the same panel as the primary one.

Regards,
Roman

[roman_ch]

Hello Jessica,

I have tested whether re-scaling occurs on a different machine with a clean NT install. It does. The machines have different OSs and DirectXs so unlikely that versioning is to blame.

As requested, I have prepared a video and some screenshots with dataseries settings for reference. I will send these separately by email to platform support quoting this thread. I will also add some additional info in my email.

Regards,
Roman

[NinjaTrader_JessicaP]

Thank you once more for working with us on this. The notes and video you sent were helpful. Unfortunately I was unable to reproduce this on a "stock" NinjaTrader set-up with no add-ons. Could you review the video I am returning and let us know if we skipped any steps or if there were important differences between the test on my end and your test?

http://www.screencast.com/t/AXdbSVy7g

[roman_ch]

Hello Jessica,

Many thanks for looking into this and appreciate your help. The trigger for NT re-scale is historical data reload; and it would not re-scale without that. I could not see "Loading" at any time in your video (so I am not sure if you tried this?). The key is to adjust manually when tick per minute ratio is X and reload later when tick per minute ratio is Y. The bigger the difference in ratio, the more re-scaling occurs.

(Just in case you might be wondering why I would not stop reloading data: NT still has a few bugs (as per some other threads, I agree that NT does not always respect trading hours for script-loaded secondary dataseries, data gaps for past days sometime occur, plus a few others). Generally, these are intermittent issues and I will not be trying to catch them myself. But when these things do occur, a data reload often is the solution. So I have to reload once so often. More importantly, data reload on reconnection also causes re-scaling.)

Regards,
Roman

[NinjaTrader_JessicaP]

Thank you Roman. I was able to reproduce with these steps :


· Set up a 100 tick chart
· Turn equidistant bar spacing off (chart properties)
· Stretch the left and right edges so you see exactly 1 hour on your chart
· Slide left and right, to ensure you are continuing to see a 1 hour span
· Press ctrl + shift + r

I will follow up with the responsible teams.