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As I promised a few messages ago, here is the latest scoop on
QCharts. I have no affiliation with them, other than paying my
monthly fees and very heavily relying on the real-time charts and
tables they provide.
"Welcome to the QCharts Beta Test Program!
Contents
Introduction
QCharts 2.1 Beta - download the latest version
QLink DDE 0.6 Beta - allows you to use real-time quotes & historical
data in Excel
QFeed Developer's Program - write your own Windows applications in
Visual Basic, C++, Delphi and other COM-aware development environment
that use the real-time data service used by QCharts.
MFC42.dll Installer - install new versions of Windows resources
Introduction
If you have not registered for the QCharts Beta Program, please go to
the registration page and sign up. Registered beta users will be
notified by email when new beta versions are available. The survey
takes just a minute, and helps us know you better so we can make the
product better suited to your needs. (Contrary to what the survey
results say it will not take 24 hours to process your request.)
Risks: Beta means it is usually better - but - it also means you
accept some risk that the software may have bugs, inconsistencies,
inadequately documented features or worse. But the reward side of the
equation is that you get cutting edge trading tools faster than those
who won't accept the risks and responsibilities involved.
Responsibilities
Use the product.
Send us feedback.
Send us more feedback.
We depend on our users to help us make the product better and we
listen. But we can't read your minds. If there is anything about the
product you would like to see improved, we want to hear about it! If
you don't report a crash or a bug you find because you figure some
other user will do it, then the problem may never get reported; then
you will be annoyed with us for not fixing it. Support for QCharts
beta - Customer service staff are not yet fully trained yet to
support the new features in this version. If you have questions or
comments about version 2.0 send them to QCharts@xxxxxxxxx instead.
Thanks for participating - we look forward to your help and we hope
you enjoy this powerful new version.
QCharts 2.1 build 14 (beta) Download the QCharts 2.1 build 14 beta
installer by clicking on one of the two links below:
GetQChartsBeta.exe (85K)
When you install QCharts 2.1 build 14 it will replace your existing
QCharts application with the newer one. Workspaces, symbol files or
other resources you have created or modified will not be affected. If
you want to be safe and keep the older version, simply install the
beta version in a different destination folder.
Changes in version 2.1 build 14:
New technical analysis studies added: Directional Movement (ADX) by
Welles Wilder Choppiness Index by E.W. Driess Both of these
indicators measure whether the market is trending or is in a choppy
period of consolidation. Wilder's is the better known of the two.
The Choppiness Index is based on the principles of chaos theory and
is simpler and a bit more responsive than the ADX. High readings on
the ADX indicate that the market is trending; low readings mean it is
not trending. High readings on the Choppiness Index indicate periods
of consolidation, low readings indicate periods of trendiness. In
both cases extreme readings often portend a change in the market's
"mode". Extreme levels of trendiness often presage following periods
of choppiness, and often coincide with tops and bottoms.
Added new Position fields in quote sheets for more realistic
portfolio tracking: Commission - the Position Edit dialog allows you
to include commission cost in the P/L. (Don't forget to enter the
commission you will be charged to get out of the position as well.)
Contract multiplier - used for futures (varies) & options (=100) to
make profit & loss numbers reflect the actual economic value of the
position. The default is 1, for stocks and means that one point in
each share is worth $1.00. The contract multiplier for Treasury
Bonds, for example, is 1000 - each bond point is worth $1,000 if you
hold one contract. For options, the multiplier is 100. P/L Today -
shows the net P/L on the day (the exiting column, "Profit/Loss" shows
the net P/L based on the change in price relative to the basis price.
Added Total and Sub-Total rows to Quote Sheets so the P/L and Return
figures can be aggregated. Sub-Total totals all the Position
information for all rows above up to another Sub-total row, if there
is one.
Multiple versions of QCharts can run at a time on the same PC only if
two versions of QCharts are installed and run from different
directories. This chanve was made to prevent problems associated with
running both versions from the same folder - both use the same
QCharts/Temp files, which could, potentially, cause problems. To do
this, run the GetQCharts.exe the first time, and when it is done, go
to your desktop and give the QCharts shortcut a different name, like
"QCharts Primary". Then run the GetQCharts.exe installer a second
time and install the second version into another directory. The
installer will put a second shortcut on the desktop and you can
rename it "QCharts Secondary", or anything that pleases you. Use the
different shortcuts to start the different installed versions.
QCharts will suggest a switch to a better server connection only when
the current connection is really poor, and the server it is
connecting to has to be significantly better. This will eliminate
the needless switching version 2.1 build 6 users were experiencing.
Fixed a printer driver compatibility problem
Optimized Chart drawing code improves charting responsiveness
New Features in QCharts 2.1:
New SingleQuote display - like a quote sheet for a single symbol -
lets you arrange fields normally laid out in columns along the row in
a Quote Sheet any way you'd like. The window it can be [Sym
0]-linked to the active symbol like a chart. SingleQuote window
layouts can be saved and retrieved from disk.
We now support new ways to add lists of symbols into Quote Sheets
(look in the Quote Sheet menu or for new icons on the toolbar):
Option Chains - will populate with all the options for an underlying
symbol. You can specify the month, strike price range, and whether to
list puts, calls or both.
Symbol Sets - server-maintained lists of symbols for different
Industry Groups (as defined by Market Guide) instead of previous
symbol files on disk.
New Quote.com Breadthalizer(tm) symbol files - we calculate a host of
proprietary statistics on All US, NYSE, AMEX, NASDAQ and Dow30
stocks. This includes and goes way beyond advance, decline and
unchanged breadth statistics. We have interesting things like volume
traded at the bid, volume traded at the ask. Percentage of stocks at
new yearly highs and lows, and a bunch of others. The Breadthalizer
symbols can be added to the quote sheet with the Import Symbols
command in the Quote Sheet menu.
We now have key Market Guide fundamental data for stocks available in
Snapshot quote displays (Quote Sheets, SingleQuote, Level II Snapshot
quote display, and chart snapshot display.) The data are also
available using the Market Guide Company Profile link in QCharts'
built in web browser.
The server Echo statistic in the Status bar (next to the clock) is
now color coded to let you know the quality of your current
connection. The codes progress from green (less than 1.5 second
delay) to yellow (1.5 to 5 seconds) to orange (more than 5 seconds)
to red (disconnected). If a better connection can be made to another
server, QCharts will tell you about it and ask if you want to switch
(if you don't respond in 30 seconds it will switch automatically.)
We've added a qbytes statistic that shows the application's workload
in bytes left to process. If the qbytes statistic goes above zero it
means QCharts can't keep up with the processing load you have put on
it, and it may affect your update performance. Reduce the number of
symbols on watch and windows you are updating (or get a faster
computer with more memory!) Qytes is also color coded - grey
indicates qbytes is less than 1Kbytes, yellow means it is more than
1kbytes but less than 5kbytes; red is more than 5kbytes.
Level II ticks - The Level II/Regional Exchanges display now shows
+/- next to the quoted price to indicate when it has been raised or
lowered from the previous quote.
We've addressed several bugs and added other minor feature
enhancements. The program should work even more smoothly and reliably
than earlier versions. Some of the window icons have been changed -
quote sheets now use a double quotation mark (SingleQuote window is a
single quotation mark), and hotlist-related buttons are now on fire.
New Features in QCharts 2.0:
NASDAQ Level II and Regional Exchange price matrix displays Basic
Technical Indicators Control over chart colors, bar width Better
price level pointer mode Hot Lists display selection values, display
more items More Snapshot quote fields for quote sheets Position
tracking in quote sheets
New stuff in build 12
Nasdaq Level II is now available to beta subscribers with real-time
Nasdaq permission enabled. If you would like to run it, contact
customer service and have them upgrade your real-time subscription
from Nasdaq level I to Nasdaq level II. The real-time exchange fee
will be $50.00 for the month of December instead of $4.00. Alerts
Alerts can now play any .wav file sounds when triggered - several are
included in the installation, and a default sound can be specified in
the View Preferences Alert dialog. An alert can be re-set after it
has been triggered Alerts will sound every 10 seconds if QCharts is
not the front-most application.
The Browser menu (available when a Web Browser window is open in the
QCharts window) now has cascading sub-menus, which has allowed us to
expand the links to useful Quote.com web content. Check this out -
we've added links to the new IPO center and other IPO-related news
and calendars!
You can now save and load Chart Layouts templates, making it easy to
apply your favorite technical indicators to a chart. You can even
set the default so your favorite layout is applied whenever you
create a new chart.
QLink DDE - update your Excel spreadsheet with real time data! QLink
is a small (39K) application that provides a DDE interface to QFeed
based real-time quotes, historical tick, intra-day and daily data.
Also included is an add-in Quote.com menu Wizard for Microsoft Excel
which makes it easy to add real-time data to your spreadsheets to
make them live.
SetupQLink.exe (427K) installs QLink beta 0.6 build 3 (this is a
lower version number than the previous beta version 1.0 build 6, but
it is a more recent version.) (Posted 21 December 1998)
This new beta version 0.6 build 3 has a number of changes: Bars now
has two new options: ALLSESSIONS - Display data for all sessions in
intra-day data FILL - Optionally fill blank bars with the last known
Close value Time & date is now displayed correctly Support for all
Snapshot fields Uses new ContinuumClient.dll. Note: If you have
QLink 1.0 build 6 installed previously, you must delete the
ContinuumClient.dll file from your Windows/System directory if you
have a copy there.
QFeed Developer Program
If you are a programmer in C++, Delphi, Visual Basic for Microsoft
Windows and would like to have direct access to our data feed, which
is called QFeed you can join the QFeed Developer Program. This will
provide you free access to our QFeed Sofware Developer Kit (SDK).
Your application can be as powerful, fast and easy to use as QCharts
- in fact we hope you will develop even better applications than
QCharts.
MFC42.DLL Installer
If you are using an older version of Windows95 you may need to
install a newer version of Microsoft's MFC42.dll - a system file that
provides services that QCharts needs to run. You can upgrade your
version of Microsoft Internet Explorer to take care of this problem,
or you can download and run the following installer: SetupMFC.exe
(767K) Be sure to re-start your PC after you have run this Setup
program.
If you have any questions about qchart or these pages, please send
email to QCharts@xxxxxxxxx or fax your questions to the attention of
"QCharts Beta Program" at ++650-930-1111.
Last modified 24 March 1999 "
Cheers,
Rob Lake
rbl@xxxxxxxxxxx
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