Enhancement Suggestions  [SOLVED]

Questions about MultiCharts .NET and user contributed studies.
GTrader
Posts: 83
Joined: 30 Oct 2012
Has thanked: 24 times
Been thanked: 8 times

Enhancement Suggestions

Postby GTrader » 03 Oct 2014

I've recently been evaluating all the platforms that I trade on and trying to consolidate to one platform. Through this process it has become clear what my needs are to make a long term commitment to a given platform. No platform has everything, but they need to be open enough that workarounds can be made by the user or 3rd party addons.

I have 3 main suggestions for MC:

1) Allow for tool development within MC. Most platforms now (or will soon) allow you to develop your own tools (mini applications) with in the platform. It obviously requires you to expose hooks into the main executable. This for me is a must. Most of your users for MC.Net are sophisticated programmers and I would think will want to go down this route at some point. Personally, I would prefer a more sandbox environment where most of the objects are exposed and I can create any tool I want, but not have to worry about all the low level programming.

2) Automate more of the data management. Adding symbols to the quote manager is not fun. I would think that you should be able to handle much of this automatically depending on the datasource selected. It is really painful when I have to add hundreds of stocks. I would like to denote a couple of logical rules such as a) get historical data from source [xyz] and live data from [abc], or b) select IB as your data source and it populates the quote manager with all the tickers from IB. Also, to be able to schedule data updates for all my securities over night so everything is updated by morning.

3) Lastly, documentation is still a major issue. Personally I would would prefer the documentation to have links to examples as they say "one example is worth a thousand words".

User avatar
Henry MultiСharts
Posts: 9165
Joined: 25 Aug 2011
Has thanked: 1264 times
Been thanked: 2957 times

Re: Enhancement Suggestions

Postby Henry MultiСharts » 06 Oct 2014

1) Allow for tool development within MC. Most platforms now (or will soon) allow you to develop your own tools (mini applications) with in the platform. It obviously requires you to expose hooks into the main executable. This for me is a must. Most of your users for MC.Net are sophisticated programmers and I would think will want to go down this route at some point. Personally, I would prefer a more sandbox environment where most of the objects are exposed and I can create any tool I want, but not have to worry about all the low level programming.
Hello GTrader,

1) Please specify the specific objects you want to have exposed.
Adding symbols to the quote manager is not fun. I would think that you should be able to handle much of this automatically depending on the datasource selected. It is really painful when I have to add hundreds of stocks.
2) The level of automation depends on the data vendor's API. IB API does not provide access to entire list of supported instruments. For those data vendors that provide this information you can type in an asterisk (*) and click Lookup (there is a corresponding messages regarding support of this functionality in the lookup window).Image

a) get historical data from source [xyz] and live data from [abc]
a) You can use Data Source Merging to get historical and realtime data for different vendors on the same chart.
b) select IB as your data source and it populates the quote manager with all the tickers from IB.
b) You can use Collect Relatime Data Without plotting for populating your database with realtime data.
Also, to be able to schedule data updates for all my securities over night so everything is updated by morning.
At the moment you can delete the data and use Portfolio Trader or Scanner window to bulk download the required data for you. Automating this procedure is something that we will possibly look into in the future.

3) Lastly, documentation is still a major issue. Personally I would would prefer the documentation to have links to examples as they say "one example is worth a thousand words".
MultiCharts .Net is oriented to experienced programmers. In case you have any questions regarding C# coding we recommend referencing MSDN for information. Interfaces and classes available in MultiCharts .Net are described in MC .Net help file (PowerLanguage .Net Editor->Help tab-> PowerLanguage .Net Help). You can also find the code examples in the source code of the prebuilt MultiCharts studies (PowerLanguage .Net Editor->File tab->Open).

MultiCharts .NET Programming guide that contains important and useful information not only for beginners but for experienced MC .Net users as well. This is the recommended "Getting started for programming in MultiCharts .Net": https://www.multicharts.com/downloads/M ... e-v1.0.pdf

Wiki format: https://www.multicharts.com/trading-sof ... ming_Giude

MC .NET FAQ: 
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=45848

Additional information
http://www.tradingcode.net/multicharts- ... -articles/

Make sure you are running the latest 9.0 Release version of MultiCharts .Net to have the latest improvements: https://www.multicharts.com/net/trading ... -download/
Attachments
Lookup.png
(31.86 KiB) Downloaded 536 times

GTrader
Posts: 83
Joined: 30 Oct 2012
Has thanked: 24 times
Been thanked: 8 times

Re: Enhancement Suggestions

Postby GTrader » 07 Oct 2014

Hi Henry,
I'm looking to create my own application within MC. I would like to be able to add a new menuitem in the main menu where I can launch my own form. You have some of the objects exposed such as data, account info, etc. It would be good to expose the backtesting / optimization engine as well. There might be other things I need but I won't know until I get through the first step.

With regard to your answer on documentation. I don't have questions with regards to C# or any programming language (I'm fluent in many programming languages). What I mean is intimate knowledge of the object structure within MC. How the objects work or which object to use isn't always clear without a great deal of study. What would be helpful is for a given object to see a link to where it has been used in example code. You gotta remember that you guys wrote all the code so what seems obvious to you isn't to someone jumping in for the first time.

Thanks for your help.

User avatar
Henry MultiСharts
Posts: 9165
Joined: 25 Aug 2011
Has thanked: 1264 times
Been thanked: 2957 times

Re: Enhancement Suggestions  [SOLVED]

Postby Henry MultiСharts » 08 Oct 2014

Hi Henry,
I'm looking to create my own application within MC. I would like to be able to add a new menuitem in the main menu where I can launch my own form. You have some of the objects exposed such as data, account info, etc. It would be good to expose the backtesting / optimization engine as well. There might be other things I need but I won't know until I get through the first step.
Unfortunately there is no such functionality at the moment. You may want to submit a feature request to the Project Management of our web site so other users can vote for it: https://www.multicharts.com/pm/
With regard to your answer on documentation. I don't have questions with regards to C# or any programming language (I'm fluent in many programming languages). What I mean is intimate knowledge of the object structure within MC. How the objects work or which object to use isn't always clear without a great deal of study. What would be helpful is for a given object to see a link to where it has been used in example code. You gotta remember that you guys wrote all the code so what seems obvious to you isn't to someone jumping in for the first time. Thanks for your help.
Thank you for your feedback. It has been forwarded to the management of the company.


Return to “MultiCharts .NET”