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I'll be a bit more general about my answer because I use TradeStation and not MultiCharts. I did the port of the NT VPA indicator to ThinkorSwim. VPA is someone's interpretation of VSA. You can find the thread on this site to find out more if interested. I have been working on and off porting the same indicator to easy language. The basics are done, but finding time to complete it and overcoming TradeStation's shortcomings has been challenging.
One of the problems I ran into, and this may be only specific to TradeStation, is that the plots can only be lines, histograms, points (circles), crosses ("+") and hashes ("-"). The VSA/VPA indicator makes liberal use of arrows, triangles, squares and diamonds, in addition to circles, to designate certain items. If you read William's book and saw the TradeGuider screen shots, you know what I mean. The non-inclusion of those additional shapes into TradeStation has been an ongoing request for years (see the TS support site). That being said, my implementation can not use those symbols. Some will say to use ascii characters to replace the missing symbols, but that's not entirely doable. Yes, the square, diamond, and circle can be found in ascii tables. Yes, one has to type in the hex code into the easy language editor for TS and print the character on the screen. However, not all of those symbols are supported in the editor. I know because I tried. So let me ask you this question about MultiCharts: does it support symbols beyond what TradeStation offers? Specifically, the aforementioned symbols (arrow up, arrow down, triangle up, triangle down, diamonds, and squares)?
You could ask that, for the TS version, would I be willing to replace those symbols with some others TS does support? I would answer yes, and that is where I am with the implementation. Would the implementation be widely acceptable if those symbols were vastly different in appearance from what TradeGuider or ToS uses? To me, it doesn't matter because I can code it however best I find useful. Others may disagree.
Sorry for the long non-answer,
-C
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu
cbritton, first, please, don't apologize for such a thoughtful reply. It is folks like you who make this site the great resource that it is. You posted in response to my request for help, and I thank you.
What you explained makes a lot of sense, and I understand. I do not have the answers for which you ask though. I will seek them out. I think I'll start by posting on the MC forum. And hopefully others here will chime-in too.
I can make use of TOS, worst case scenario, but would prefer to have MC handle this one... Thanks again.
Nice. Unfortunately, TS doesn't support that function. I'm not sure if you can open it, but here's some information from the TS support site regarding this same issue:
I could work on a TS version with stupid text symbols and let a MC user update the indicator with that text function. That might be a time consuming approach tho.
Regards,
-C
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu
Here's a very simple demonstration. These 2 screenshots show the ToS and TS version displaying the unconfirmed upthrust bar only. The ToS version has the square while the TS version has the letter "s". Here is the code that does the display in TS:
The MC version would need to add the Text_setFontName("Windings") and then change the "s" to "n" which, I think, corresponds to the square in Windings.
Regards,
-C
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu
Sorry for the delay. Still on travel, catching-up now...
Tight on time, but I got this reply on the MC's forum...
+++++
Note:
Text objects can be programmed in the paid version of MultiCharts.
Text objects can be drawn with the statement TEXT_NEW
Through this command in your indicator, text can be placed anywhere on the chart: above a bar, below a bar, at the right top corner of the screen, etc.,
They can also be programmed to appear in any attributes: large, small, bold, italic, underlined, framed, etc., plus, in any color (foreground and background) you like under the rainbow.
+++++
That will definitely help. This indicator will work. It just won't look pretty on TS. It will look good on MC using the wingdings font set. The problem is that I'm not a paying subscriber to MC, so I can't finish off the indicator.
You have actually gotten me motivated to complete this indicator, at least as far as I can take it. I am making progress...little bit every day. I'll post a screenshot later today.
Regards,
-C
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu
As promised, here's the screenshot of the VPA indicator on TradeStation with the daily chart of T. I changed the color on the bars so that the indicator symbols can stand out. The letters correspond to the appropriate symbol (triangle down, diamond, etc.) on wingdings or wingdings3.
There is still a lot of work I need to do on this indicator before I release it, so please be patient.
Regards,
-C
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu
Glad I could be of some help, while you are helping me! I too have MCDT, the free version. If I know that there is a solid VPA solution for MC, then that would further entice me to get the paid version. And it's looking promising now...