Right now, it is possible to make chart objects selectable with the mouse, and to alter the z-order of those objects on the chart by clicking the Ctrl key and scrolling the mouse wheel to move the object above/below other objects.
The problem here is that there is no option to always keep the data series on top of all other objects. If you think about, the data series (i.e. the price bars themselves) are qualitatively different from a visual point of view than every other object, and traders often want to have this particular object on top of all others, at all times, so they can see the price action as clearly as possible.
You could argue that it is possible to do this by simply selecting the data series and moving it to the top using the mouse + ctrl key combination, and this is true. If you are dealing with a chart that simply has the data series plus a number of indicators on it, this is not really a problem, because you only have to do it once when you set up the chart, and that's it.
But what about when you are constantly drawing manual objects on the chart, such as rays, trendlines, fib retracements, and so on? For intraday trading, you can in theory be doing this all the time. It becomes annoying to have to always select the data series and scroll it to the top whenever you draw a new object, and it becomes even more annoying if you are dealing with a series of 5 charts and you are drawing a global object like a trendline which will appear on all of them. In that case, you would have to individually select the data series on each of the 5 charts and manually scroll it to the top every time you drew something, which is actually an issue because if you draw a short-term global trendline on a 3 minute chart, it will show up on a 60 minute chart and essentially obscure the last couple of bars completely. If you draw 3 or 4 lines like this, the longer-term charts become very hard to view with all the lines drawn on them obscuring the actual price bars. You can make those charts to not show global objects, but sometimes you need them to do that if you are drawing longer term trendlines that you DO want to see.
What is needed is a simple change: an option in the Properties window of each chart, that allows you to keep the data series as the top drawn object, no matter what. Essentially, every time an object is added to the chart, whether it is manually drawn or whether a new indicator is added, if this flag is set to True, then exactly the same code path should execute as if you had manually selected the data series and scrolled it to the top with your mouse. Whatever that code is, just put it into a method and call it every time a new object is added to that chart. You would only have to trigger this method once per drawn object right after it is added, and it would make sure that whatever was drawn on the chart, the data series would always be perfectly visible and on top. This would save a lot of hassle for those of us that like to draw things on our charts, especially if we are doing it multiple times per day.
Would it be possible to work this into the next version of NT?
The problem here is that there is no option to always keep the data series on top of all other objects. If you think about, the data series (i.e. the price bars themselves) are qualitatively different from a visual point of view than every other object, and traders often want to have this particular object on top of all others, at all times, so they can see the price action as clearly as possible.
You could argue that it is possible to do this by simply selecting the data series and moving it to the top using the mouse + ctrl key combination, and this is true. If you are dealing with a chart that simply has the data series plus a number of indicators on it, this is not really a problem, because you only have to do it once when you set up the chart, and that's it.
But what about when you are constantly drawing manual objects on the chart, such as rays, trendlines, fib retracements, and so on? For intraday trading, you can in theory be doing this all the time. It becomes annoying to have to always select the data series and scroll it to the top whenever you draw a new object, and it becomes even more annoying if you are dealing with a series of 5 charts and you are drawing a global object like a trendline which will appear on all of them. In that case, you would have to individually select the data series on each of the 5 charts and manually scroll it to the top every time you drew something, which is actually an issue because if you draw a short-term global trendline on a 3 minute chart, it will show up on a 60 minute chart and essentially obscure the last couple of bars completely. If you draw 3 or 4 lines like this, the longer-term charts become very hard to view with all the lines drawn on them obscuring the actual price bars. You can make those charts to not show global objects, but sometimes you need them to do that if you are drawing longer term trendlines that you DO want to see.
What is needed is a simple change: an option in the Properties window of each chart, that allows you to keep the data series as the top drawn object, no matter what. Essentially, every time an object is added to the chart, whether it is manually drawn or whether a new indicator is added, if this flag is set to True, then exactly the same code path should execute as if you had manually selected the data series and scrolled it to the top with your mouse. Whatever that code is, just put it into a method and call it every time a new object is added to that chart. You would only have to trigger this method once per drawn object right after it is added, and it would make sure that whatever was drawn on the chart, the data series would always be perfectly visible and on top. This would save a lot of hassle for those of us that like to draw things on our charts, especially if we are doing it multiple times per day.
Would it be possible to work this into the next version of NT?
Comment