Hi preston,
I felt that I present a list of requests, that will make the program simpler and more functional. You may have a look and incorporate as feasible.
I have been regularly using NSEDD for inputting data into AmiBroker and it is working flawlessly.
I have for testing purpose, tried with FCharts and the data is compatible. You might have seen the screen shot posted by me earlier.
I will install FiboTrader and other popular free TA software and will test with NSEDD data after the changes proposed now, as some of the requests will have bearing on data suitability.
REMOVABLE OPTIONS
1) Portable Feature : We may make the program as a portable application, to facilitate running the program from pen drive and moving the program and data across different systems etc. As no registry entries are added / modified, this can be easily be done.
Presently, there is a facility by which user selects the folder into which he will download EQBE / Historical / Live data. Instead, the program may be delivered with EMPTY FIXED sub-folders and the downloaded/ converted data is saved into those respective folders ONLY. In addition to providing portability, this will greatly simplify the user interface.
But the folder opening option presently available is a cool one and may be required. To achieve this, we may have a single 'folder open' button to the right of progress box, on clicking of which, it will open the folder into which the last download operation took place.
2) General Options : Remember Last Date
This feature when checked is very useful and should always be in checked mode. i.e., may be removed and the logic built in accordingly.
After the user downloads and establishes the database for the desired few months or years, he will be updating the data every day, either at the evening of the trading day or the morning of the next trading day. So, the program may remember the last 'To Date' add 1 and make it the 'From date' for the next run. The 'To Date' will be the current day. With this logic, in both cases, the date range remains logical and the check box is unnecessary. Hope my view is clear.
3) BhavCopy Options : Date Format
This option will presently converts the date field of the converted data and also the dates when displayed in the filename. FCharts will easily identify the date format YYYYMMDD, which is unambiguous. If the date format is anything other than YYYYMMDD, it will interpret the date with reference to the date format settings in the windows international settings. As the date, contained within the data is meant for the charting software only ad the user does not normally see it, the date format may be YYYYMMDD always. This does not pose a problem with other TA software also.
This option may be removed altogether and the file names may be in YYYYMMDD format to facilitate easy sorted view to identify the missing dates and all other dates like from date and to date may be in the DDMMYYYY format, which the Indian users are accustomed to.
4) Bhavcopy Options : Add Header
This option also is NOT necessary. Instead, the program may ALWAYS add the header. In AB, within import settings file, this can be set. In FCharts it automatically recognizes the header when present. With Fibotrader and Metastock, the header is a MUST. By always adding the header, we will get data compatibility with Fibotrader and Metastock also.
Presently, the header inserted is:
Ticker,Date,Open,High,Low,Close,Vol
Instead, the header line may be: (Insert each field Name within angle brackets)
Ticker,Date,Open,High,Low,Close,Vol
<Ticker>,<Date>,<Open>,<High>,<Low>,<Close>,<Volume>
This change will make it Fibotrader and Metastock compatible without losing the AB & FC compatibility. Now different files are using different formats. All may use this format for columns, and their header always.
This brings the data to metastock data format standard. Metastock is THE most popular data standard and any Charting software will surely make his program accept metastock data format.
OPTIONS FOR DEVELOPER & ADVANCED USER:
5) General Options : File Extension Text box
Default extension may be TXT. This option may be removed from the user interface, but still be available for changing from the INI file.
6) BhavCopy Options : Change Format
Now this option is available to user for manipulation. In my view this option may be required for the developerand the advanced user ONLY and is NOT required for the normal regular user. So, again, in my view this option may be removed from the Bhav copy options tab. This option, however, IS available in the options.ini file and can be used when necessary.
7) Bhav copy Options : Use Default Names
This also may be removed from the user interface but still will be available from the INI file, for reasons sama as for 'Change Format'.
8) Bhavcopy Options : Remove spaces
This also may be removed from the user interface but still will be available from the INI file, for reasons sama as for 'Change Format'. Moreover, if user makes a mistake, the downloaded data will be useless for importing into charting software.
OTHER REQUESTS
9) Historical Options : Historical Indice and the Historical Yield
These are not the program options, but are the user selections for the services. So, I feel, that these may be brought out within the Historical Data module like EQBE and FO in the BhavCopy module.
10) Facility to rename indice: Some users may use yahoo for intra-day data. Others may use NSE (through QT or other sources). Different sources use different names to the same index. To facilitate proper integration and combined look-up of EOD and Intra-day quotes, Indice may be allowed to be renamed as per user's choice, through options and may be saved to INI file.
11) The Indice data downloaded does not have the ticker column. This also may be provided, even if the information is available in the file name. Same is the case with yield.
12) Feature which saves the program window size and position into the INI file and restoring through the next start-up. This will help users to Use different applications simultaneously and with each application positioning in it's assigned location for ease of combined use.
13) The application window size is presently about height= 568 and width = 651. The height may be fixed to a max of 540 and the width may be set to a max of 720. These limits will help users with different display resolutions from 800 X 600 (old machines) onwards to at least 1280 X 800.
Thanks.
murthymsr
