Dashed-lines not always display as 'dashed'

Questions about MultiCharts and user contributed studies.
denizen2
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Dashed-lines not always display as 'dashed'

Postby denizen2 » 21 Nov 2006

Just discovered something relating to why/when the dashed-line style is not (consistently) displayed as dashed. Same story for dotted lines.

To recreate the 'bug': Create a chart with two different time-periods for the price series, say 10min and 1HR, and then create a sub-graph indicator based on the 10min (data1), and also create another (or same) indicator based on the 1Hr (data2) prices. Choose the line style as dashed or dotted for both of the two sub-graphs. You will notice that the 1Hr sub-graph will display the dashed line ok, but the 10min sub-graph will not :>)).

What does this mean? It seems to show that the implementation of the dashed or dotted lines is NOT based on screen-pixels dimensions, as it should be. Instead, it is based on the time-scale dimensions.... :P A small oversight? I would presume that the line-styles should be 'applied' AFTER being converted to screen dimensions, not before, right?

The line-thickness issue/problems may also be related to the same or similar issue? :idea:

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Alex Kramer
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Postby Alex Kramer » 21 Nov 2006

I tried reproducing your example and I think you have a point.

On the screenshot there's a 10 mins. data (green bars) and hourly data (red bars), and on the subcharts there is the same study applied to the corresponding color of bars. The style for both is set the same, dashed line, but for 10 minutes the dashing is not visible at all.

I will show it to the devlopers, thanks for the input.
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Alex Kramer
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Postby Alex Kramer » 21 Nov 2006

This can be easily alleviated bu expanding the chart horizontally - click the Increase bar spacing button a few times and both lines will be ok. You might need to use a study that will be based not on each bar but on every tenth or so - this can be done with EasyLanguage.

denizen2
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Postby denizen2 » 21 Nov 2006

This can be easily alleviated bu expanding the chart horizontally - click the Increase bar spacing button a few times and both lines will be ok. You might need to use a study that will be based not on each bar but on every tenth or so - this can be done with EasyLanguage.
Alex, your suggested 'solution' only points out that the line-dash spacing is NOT being displayed as a line-style, rather it is being displayed under control of bar-spacing. The two concepts are, or *should* be , independent. Besides, the bar-spacing may be way to large when the user is under the constraint that the line-dash spacing looks ok. :roll:

I think what we are looking at here is actually a 'side-effect' or un-intended consequence while the programmer-designer was focused on the issue of how to plot multiple time-scales on the same plot. Normally, the user would expect (and get) a line-style that looks ok, regardless of how close the bars were spaced. However, during the design process of trying to accomodate the different time-scales, the line-style implementation got 'screwed up' by keeping it scaled to the bar spacing instead of a fixed number of screen pixels.

So I would think that this issue is best categorized as a 'bug' (needing fixing) rather than just asking the user to adjust the bar spacing even when that is not 'desired' by user. Line styles displayed and bar-spacing should not be dependent on each other, right? :wink: But that is just my two-bits worth.

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Alex Kramer
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Postby Alex Kramer » 22 Nov 2006

I see your point, this will be presented to the interface developers.


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