Saving chart tabs order

All good. My mt4 deletes old bars from my view, so perhaps we have different versions. I know brokers pay for different features and not all versions are the same. For instance I do not have an investor password, so I cannot create a TE. I also do not have an ask line. Don't need either one, so it is not a big deal to me. I used to trade 1M charts and scroll back to compare earlier trade points and my bars would be gone. Don't know what to tell you. You got lucky I guess. I am not going to run your program, for obvious reasons, and no offense. Personally I don't really care. I can't trade bar 2000 for profit. I just use that many to see a week of data so when I am bored, or want to check a sudden idea, I have some data to look at. If it is a big deal to you, then by all means pursue it. Have fun

Got it running, no alerts so far. Mt4 v4/1090 (icm).
Anyway, the amount of bars in any chart can be seen when hovering over any chart-tab and these increased with any version of 4 different brokers so far.

That's really bizarre, but is the way it is. Depending on how "Bars" is vs. "prev_calculated", if always the same number, it might have accuracy issues for *some* indicators, depending on how written, because they might not update properly.

You could use the indicator on an M1 chart and know right away if it's going to give you any warnings. Obviously I can't reproduce yours (or... what MT4 broker is the feed?). If you try it, I'll be interested in what the alerts say.

Thanks. I don't think you'll see any alerts, but that's why to test it, to validate or disprove my assumptions. I could obviously do some test myself in a separate MT4, except that I shutdown my PC every night. I suspect any auto-Bar-reset is going to be rare, maybe weekly... or, maybe never, hence necessary to restart MT4.

Strange that I never paid attention to that tooltip detail. Thanks!

That is cool. Never noticed it either. Mine says 2011, so there is a little bleed over, but after that, the bars are gone.

You can programmatically rearrange the windows by copying the charts properties to a list then closing all the charts and then reopen them in the order you want. Here is an example script.

This config is saved in the MT4\profiles\default folder. There should be a chartxx file for every chart you have open which stores the window position, and there's a order.wnd that stores the window order. If you don't see these then that's your problem.

Hi Nicholishen, ...

Caution to users. That script has some big issues, but you did say it was just an "example script", so thanks for that.

Wow. OOP code. Interesting stretch for my brain since I write C-style. I was exposed to the concepts in a Java class many years ago but never used or applied it after the class, so I didn't get much benefit or lasting value, but I see how it can be very helpful here.

There are some bugs with the program. It always deletes one chart each time run! It might be the last chart, or most recent or ??
Another bug I see sometimes is the script is asking if I want to remove it from the chart. Huh? No idea why the code didn't just complete and return.
When I tried replacing "i=1" with "i=0" (a guess), uh, that didn't work. It reopened the right number of charts, but changed the name of 1-or-more until they were all the same symbol and period (after running it several times).

Other problems I noticed in the present version:
It resets every chart back to your "default" template! So, all objects and non-default indicators are gone.
Charts are also re-positioned to the same place on the canvas (so on top of each other, same as "default.tpl").
Whatever was the previous status (minimized or maximized or normal) is lost, and instead, it just does whatever is your "default.tpl" template (normal or maximized).

What would make this script much better would be:
Save and Restore each chart as is. Use ChartSaveTemplate then ChartApplyTemplate. (Save overwrites if name already exists!)
Restore the original window size and position. For now, this opens all charts at the same size and position as the default.tpl says, so right on top of each other.
Restore the original window display mode, as either Minimized, or Normal, or Maximized.
A triple-sort: first based on Symbol() name, (alpha sort), and 2nd-order sort (for same symbols) by chart Period(), (Descending would be my preference, from highest TF to lowest). Finally, for same Symbol,Period, do a 3rd-order sort to keep the current chart order intact.


Here's a possible approach that occurs to me:
Collect and analyze all the names of charts. For five charts, let's say they're in order: o1 o2 o3 o4 o5 (o=old)
Do the alpha sort on the symbol names, then 2nd-sort within each same-symbol group by period (decreasing #).
Do a 3rd sort within each same-symbol-and-period by the "o#" above. (Increasing, numerical). Why?
... Because you want to preserve the existing order for those which have the same Symbol(),Period()
Decide what will be the desired order of the charts before you delete any of them.
Say the analysis determines that the existing Charts Bar is presently in the order of: n5 n2 n3 n1 n4 (n=new)

Now you know that "o4" becomes "n1", so you ChartSaveTemplate(o_id[4-1],"tmp");
You can delete "o4" now, or right after you open up it's replacement chart.
The newest opened chart n1 will be at the RIGHT end of the list.
In the new chart, ChartApplyTemplate(newid,"tmp")

Repeat for chart n2(=o2), n3(=o3), n4(=o5) then n5(=o1) By the time you delete the last chart,
and create n5 at the end, the order will be: n1 n2 n3 n4 n5

By using a template "tmp", it saves the chart as-is(!), plus it keeps the "normal" chart position correct.
By re-using the same "tmp" name, one does not clutter up the list of templates. (I don't see any ChartDeleteTemplate function).

However, I have no idea if a "template" can save the fact that a chart is Minimized. (It does save whether a chart is "Normal" or "Maximized"). One might need to detect, save, and then separately re-apply that particular chart status back to the replacement chart.

Finally, some care should be given to how does the final result work with Window->Tile Windows. The order of the tiles is affected by which is the order of last-active charts. When you click on various charts in some order, notice how it changes the effect of Tile Windows. The ideal would be for some consistent result.

P.S. Actually, it is only the OP (who uses Mac) that noticed his Charts Bar tabs changing every time. It doesn't happen for me or most users, and I don't actually want to re-order my tabs ever... I know my most recent are to the right, oldest to the left. Suits me fine. HOWEVER, I do want to control and update what it keeps as the order of "Active" charts, exactly because of the way it affects "Tile Windows". Controlling this is key. I started work on it but far to go. OOP style could be even better.

Sorry for the length and extra detail. Kinda working it out in my mind as I wrote it.

This is an issue with MT since it only allows you to run a script when it's attached to a chart, and if you change the current chart's symbol (the chart the script is running on) then you must make sure that it is the very last operation, which means you wouldn't be able to use a script to change the template (maybe an indicator?). I'm sure there's a lot more cool things you can accomplish using the win32 api, but like you mentioned this was just an example and I didn't want to waste too much time on it.

Regarding OOP, I remember learning MQL5 and thinking how stupid it was, but quickly realized how powerful it was and how it opened up a whole new world of possibilities and provided easy solutions to complex problems that I've always had to hack around in procedural C-style mql programs of the past. I think if I had to go back to the old days, I'd just quit, lol. ...I mean how else could you easily implement a routine that sorts symbols by any criteria imaginable?

I just found out, that when a chart is deleted and then restored, the max. bars is also resetted so no need for restarting the platform.
At least it's a workaround for the tabs mixup problem.
This problem, btw. has been reported before elsewhere, no solution was found....

Turned out not to be the case, sorry for the false alarm....