A Very Useful Capability

[jorel]

It would be very helpful if I could force the bar chart to slide left programmatically similar to how it slides in response to the user mousewheel or left-click drag-n-drop action. The reason this would be useful for me is that I would like to plot price levels or regions that do not overlap the price bars, just to the right of the current bar. This is attractive for several reasons, the most important being that it would allow for less clutter with the same information being communicated to my eyes. For example, I may want to show a horizontal line at each price corresponding to a recent daily high/low. I could annotate these lines also, so that, in addition to color code, I would have easily referenced text that adequately describes that level.

I would like to know, 1) if this is possible, 2) if not, can it be made possible soon, 3) if it is, how to do it?

The reason I think this would be VERY useful is that many professional traders trade with levels. But they have gotten used to the clutter involved with horizontal lines superimposed over on top of their price bars. I am trying to think a little more out of the box on this idea...but it appears that I will no doubt meet with the typical response of "we don't support that, sorry". Hope I'm wrong about that.

thanks,
JR

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

What you can do is manually set the right side margin in the Chart Properties and then override the Plot() method to achieve plotting out there.

[jorel]

excellent idea....thanks for the quick reply! I'll let you know how this works out...BTW, is there any way for an indicator to force this chart property or does the user have to configure it manually?

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

Sorry that is not supported.

[jorel]

my gut feel on Ninja Trader is that it has transcended Trade Station by allowing people to use a more flexible, non-proprietary language, C#.

However, judging by all the answers in this forum that say "sorry not supported", I would venture to predict that another platform will soon fill the void created by this lack of support, just how you filled the gap created by a proprietary language of TradeStation.

If you respond accordingly, before that happens, you can be the one who transcends yourself...Otherwise, I'm afraid that market forces (software market) will render you another casualty in the ever-evolving trading software arena.

In fact, if I get ambitious enough, I may decide to do just that myself. Anyone else want to join me?

Or will I meet with a formidable response from Ninja to fix whatever it is that constantly requires you to say "not supported" ???

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

jorel,

By not supported it means it is beyond the level of support we can offer. Here on the forums we cannot possibly cover every aspect of programming. You have the full breadth of a true programming language at your disposal so you can technically do absolutely anything you want, but we can only help in terms of NinjaScript related questions. Thanks for understanding.

[jorel]

Perhaps an analogy would be instructive:

Suppose I gave you a computer and told you to go to town. "Do whatever you want! You can write an OS if you want or just write to bare metal! You can technically do whatever you want!! Oh, but ... ummm... there's no documentation on the computer hardware. Good Luck!"

That is what we have here. Yes, you can 'do anything' technically, but without documentation you're toast. Unless you want to spend your entire life reverse engineering the whole thing.

My contention, below, is that someone will realize that this lack of documentation and/or support creates a true need in the market. If NinjaTrader is lucky, that will amount to a book on how to do all the 'unsupported' stuff. If they are unlucky, it will be a brand new platform that has designed in more flexibility AND documentation for it.

Think about CVS, the fantastically powerful and popular version control system. That system has recently been replaced all around the world by the newcomer, Subversion (SVN), because it filled the gap left by all the warts in CVS...all those annoying things CVS did and all the useful things it did not do. CVS was king for more than 15 years if memory serves. SVN replaced it in less than 2.

So, technically, you are completely correct. NT does not support a way to programmatically set the right margin property from within an indicator. But, someone watching this space who is hungry enough for an opportunity to capitalize on an improved trading platform, will take what NT has done, fix all the warts, add all the capabilities people want, and leave NT in the dust.

Just my idle ranting...it will take some time, it may not even happen...but I've been in this business for 27 years...I've them come and go. All I'm saying is that when there is a gap in functionality perceived clearly by the customers AND by the competitors....watch out. Change will occur, one way or another.

thanks for your help.
Jorel

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

Jorel,

We provide extensive documentation for the methods and properties exposed in NinjaScript. When it comes down to actual C# programming you will need to consult MSDN. They have it well documented on their end for all things related to C#. Due to bandwidth reasons there is no way we can cover ever possible programming case on these forums. We can provide guidance in regards to NinjaScript and NinjaTrader, but not for more advanced C# programming.

[jorel]

Yes. I won't argue that you provide extensive documentation on NinjaTrader's capabilities. But, it is analgous to the situation where a library for something like data encryption did not provide a way to do Blowfish, but told you how to do it yourself in an example.

Doing Blowfish encryption is actually hard enough by itself, but even with a library like openssl, it is not simple. You have to create a proper abstraction between your application and the actual API provided by opensll. This abstraction is what is missing here.

So, by saying that you are built on top of C# is nice, but honestly, when you have provided people with a way to extend your platform via indicators and strategies written in C#, you need to have either a book on how to access the things many traders will want to be able to manipulate programmatically or provide an augmented API to provide them with those hooks.

For example, the Plot method. Many indicators MUST use this but it is totally undocumented. Either provide docs for it, or provide an official API layer (an abstraction) between it and you.

thanks for your help,
Jorel

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

You can find all the relevant information in the Help Guide. Every method and property is listed with clear code examples of how to use each one. Then there is the IntelliSense which will further help in the C#. Plot method is for advanced programmers. There is a simple sample available in your preinstalled indicators you can see for documentation. It requires advanced C# programming knowledge. There is no way we can teach every user how to program every possible thing on these forums. You are asking for us to provide examples and lessons for everything possible in a programming language and that is just not the case. We provide information on what we have added/modified/etc. As far as learning to program, you will have to delve into other resources. MSDN is a great resource for learning how to program in C#.

[jorel]

"As far as learning to program, you will have to delve into other resources. MSDN is a great resource for learning how to program in C#."

Thanks Josh....I'm 51, been programming since before you were born, started as an electrical engineer for Intel in '81 designing IC test systems...since then have used assembly, C, C++, C#, Pascal, Basic, Fortran, Java, Python, Lua, Shell, Forth, Javascript and SQL. Have designed FPGAs and real-time firmware as well as software running on linux servers for network security systems...so, I think I can figure out C# programming.

My advice to NinjaTrader is to either support people in what they want to do, or stop allowing extensions to your platform. All or nothing. If you keep claiming that you can do anything in C#, people will realize that is a cop out and move on to the next trading platform that does document their API better than you do.

Thanks,
Jorel