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FFcal - Plot News indicator

  • #261
  • Edited Apr 16, 2008 1:52pm Apr 15, 2008 4:41pm | Edited Apr 16, 2008 1:52pm
Quoting jhp2025
Hi David,

I got problem with my local +7.
It's not only with csv file, but also when I upload it in MT4, time goes 4 hours away from what I expected.

May you give me a hand please?
Thanks.
Hi everybody,

In response to requests like the one above, I have created the attached XLS. Hopefully the instructions embedded within it are easy enough to follow. I really don't believe that I can make the set-up any easier than this.

Please feel welcome to post questions here.

Thanks,
David

N.B. For yet another approach that doesn't require an XLS, see post #273 below.....
Attached File(s)
File Type: xls Time parameters setup.xls   63 KB | 668 downloads
  • #262
  • Apr 16, 2008 8:38am Apr 16, 2008 8:38am
Quoting hanover
Hi everybody,

In response to requests like the one above, I have created the attached XLS. Hopefully the instructions embedded within it are easy enough to follow. I really don't believe that I can make the set-up any easier than this.

Please feel welcome to post questions here.

Thanks,
David
Thanks a lot!!
  • #263
  • Apr 16, 2008 9:54am Apr 16, 2008 9:54am
Hi David,

It's so simple then, yes you're right, I might logically set my mind that the center line is GMT, so currently FF server is 4 hours behind GMT because it's DST, and my place is now 7 hours ahead from GMT.

Everything's alright now, I just made it correctly.

You're so amazing Dave... Thanks a lot then and have a nice tradings.
Jodie Forex at its Best
  • #264
  • Edited 3:24pm Apr 16, 2008 1:50pm | Edited 3:24pm
Quoting pips4life
.......
2. David, the time calculations drove me crazy in the beginning.
.......
Here's an even easier way:

1. To establish current date/time of FF calendar (i.e. New York), go to:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=179
See Image #1 below.

2. To establish your MT4 broker's date/time, go to any 1 minute (M1) chart while the market is open, press Ctrl-F to put the crosshairs on, and move them over the rightmost bar (the one that's currently forming) in the chart. Your MT4 broker's date/time is shown where the crosshairs meet the horizontal axis at the bottom of the chart.
See Image #2 below.

3. To establish your local date/time, check your computer clock, or your wristwatch.

Subtract (1) from (2), and type this value (number of hours difference) into the "No of hours your MT4 is ahead of FF calendar" parameter - that's the red oval in Image #3 below. If MT4 time is ahead of FF (New York), enter a positive number; if behind, a negative number.

Subtract (2) from (3), and type this value (number of hours difference) into the "No of hours your local time is ahead of your MT4 time" parameter - that's the blue oval in Image #3 below. If your local time is ahead of MT4 time, enter a positive number; if behind, a negative number. [NOTE: this parameter is only necessary if you want the local time displayed in the information bubble in your MT4 chart - see blue oval in Image #5 below]


Example

1. In Image #1 below, the date/time in New York is: April 16, 14:24

2. In Image #2 below, my FF broker's date/time is: April 16, 20:25

3. From my wristwatch, my local date/time is: April 17, 06:25

My MT4 broker is 6 hours (20:25 minus 14:24) ahead of New York, so I have typed 6 into the "No of hours your MT4 is ahead of FF calendar" parameter.

My local time is 10 hours (06:25 the following day, minus 20:25, i.e. 24+6–20) ahead of MT4, so I have typed 10 into the "No of hours your local time is ahead of your MT4 time" parameter.

Image #4 illustrates a simple approach to counting the number of hours.


David
Attached Image(s) (click to enlarge)
Click to Enlarge Name: ffcal timezone entry.JPG Size: 154 KB
Click to Enlarge Name: ffcal timezone counting.JPG Size: 39 KB
Click to Enlarge Name: ffcal timezone display.JPG Size: 52 KB
  • #265
  • Apr 16, 2008 11:07pm Apr 16, 2008 11:07pm
Hi David,

I appreciate the fact that you're willing to share this tool with us, so none of my suggestions to change/improve things have to be done. It's completely your choice and I don't want this to be a burden on you. However, if you don't mind reading my suggestions, I don't mind making them... lol

1. Regarding time calculations, your last post will probably clarify things for people. I would simply add to that:

a. In FFcal.exe, it would be better to change the words "FF Calendar" to "current New York time". As I said previously, my FF Calendar time is actually the same as my MT4 because that's how I set it, so that made me think my answer should be "0" but that was incorrect; neither would my local time make sense either. To say "current New York time" is unambiguous year-round.

b. No big deal, but... Consider the possibility of changing your time questions so that "MT4" is always the one refered to as "ahead". So I guess the 2nd question would reverse the order, namely: No. of hours your MT4 is ahead of your local time (Selfish of me, I know... I just like positive numbers ;-) ) Seriously, though, it's just easier to think about one reference time, and then answer two questions relative to that one time. The fact that it flipped order made it confusing for me the first time. I can see that it was more natural for you in your time zone to do it as you did. If you adopt my suggestion, I suppose to make a transition you could detect the old form setting and seed the changed version with the same number but flipped sign, and then on, ignore the "old" form variable setting, or just delete it from your config/cookie file. That would hopefully make it a seamless/painless transition for everyone.

c. It may help users to point out the following tips:

If your News-Arrows are not appearing at the right time on your MT4, then you have incorrectly answered the question:
"No. of hours your MT4 is ahead of current New York time (FF Calendar)"

If your News-Arrows appear at the right time, but the Description contains the wrong local time (which is enclosed by square brackets), then you have incorrectly answered the question:
"No. of hours your local time is ahead of your MT4 time"

Come to think of it just now... You might consider adding a couple of self-explanatory notes into the FFcal.exe form:
No. of hours your MT4 is ahead of current New York time
(this controls where the alerts are placed on your chart)

No. of hours your MT4 is ahead of your local time
(this affects the Description content of the alerts)

d. Do you happen to know if any MT4 vs. New York offsets ever need to be adjusted due to DST changes? I mentioned that my broker makes the same adjustment as the US DST change, so my MT4 vs. NY offset is the same year-round. Do other non-US MT4 brokers follow their own country DST change? If so, then this means that the FFcal.exe offset will have to be changed by the user during those few weeks in March and Oct/Nov that the DST changes are out of sync with the U.S. It may be helpful to some users to set their expectations they will need to make an adjustment.

e. FYI, I ran into a trivial bug...
My setting is "-9" for the 2nd time question re local time vs. MT4 time. Your program adds a space, making it "- 9". If I change ONLY the "9" to something else, the form will reject the change and silently make it "- 9"
again. That confused me for a bit when I thought I had made the change, hit "OK" but it made no difference. That's when I found the "bug". For me to actually change the value to, say "-8", I must replace all 3 characters "- 9" to "-8", and then my form change will stick.


2. Regarding changes to form defaults, I'd like to suggest the following:

As it is now, leaving the "Start date" unchanged has only one advantage, and that is when you are first setting up the tool and changing the time numbers until you get it set up right. After that, keeping the date unchanged has no advantage I can think up. It may in fact have a disadvantage in that leaving it the same adds more loading on the FF server. Perhaps, you might consider adding a new checkbox which is off by default, but when the user turns it on it will begin auto-updating the start date. Example: "[ ] Auto-update the calendar starting date (recommended)"


Now here's how the auto-update could work: The form opens up with the same setting as the last time the program ran. After you run "OK", then at that moment, change the starting date forward so that it's the same day-of-the-week as was just run, but less than one week in the past. When the user quits FFcal.exe, that new date will be the date that comes up next time. Suppose my starting date is last Monday and I run it on Wednesday, then obviously the "starting date Monday" is still the same as "last Monday" so there is no change to the form. But as soon as I run the tool on or after the next Monday, the old starting date is still used once (so it will re-retrieve the past week's news but this time with actual results), and the NEXT week will also load. But after it completes, the NEXT time the form is opened, it should be seeded with the most recent "last Monday"


I had previously suggested to change the default for "Number of weeks to load..." to capture the users default, but I take back that suggestion. There's a danger that a user first using "50" weeks to capture the history with forever then run 50 every time which would not be server friendly. A better suggestion is to auto-change it to the number of weeks since the "Starting date" up through the current week, AND the following week (my personal preference). The minimum would therefore be "2" but it would be greater that that if it's been 2 or more weeks since the user last ran an update.

A walk through example:
OK, so let's say I run it on 2008/04/07 (Monday) and that day is also my "starting date". The form should fill in the default number of weeks as "2" (the current week and the one after).

Now on Thursday, April 10, I re-run it again. The starting date is still April 7. Number of weeks is 2. It will retrieve the actual results for the current week thus far, and once again, re-load the coming week's news.

Because the "last Monday" is still the same "starting day" as Monday, April 07, then April 07 is left as the default starting date!

OK, now on Tuesday April 15, I re-run it. It comes with starting date of April 07. The "number of weeks" default should come up as "3" (the current week, one future week, and however many full weeks have occurred since the "starting date" up to today.

OK, now you can see that after it runs, it should advance the next default starting date to Monday April 14 (keeping the starting-day-of-the week the same, but advancing it up to the most recent "last starting day-of-week".


Oh brother... now I know I'm pretty verbose here, and now that I understand the program better, I know that I can manually adjust the starting week however I want. I just like programs to be as simple as possible, and if you get the urge to improve this particular detail, I and others will appreciate you and this tool EVEN MORE! lol


3. I figured out my problem with my second installation of MT4 not displaying the arrows properly.

Uh... doh! The FFcal.exe form has the full name to the news.csv file, but I had not changed it at all, so of course in my second MT4 installation, there was no news.csv file there.

At first, I tried to create a "shortcut" link that would point to the first MT4's file. That would be best because I would only have to run FFcal.exe once. Alas, it did not work. It wants an actual file, not a shortcut-link to the file.

Next, I discovered your handy "profile" save-and-load feature. I set up the form for the first MT4, gave a profile name, did "Save". Then I changed the form as needed for the second MT4, entered a 2nd profile name and did "Save". So now, I just select each profile and run "Load" then OK, then repeat for the other profile(s). You already built in this feature but I hadn't discovered it yet. Thanks!


Many thanks. I'll take the program "as-is" of course, but if you get an itch to take up my suggestions, then many thanks-in-advance as well.

Pips4life (Kent)
  • #266
  • Edited 1:51am Apr 17, 2008 1:26am | Edited 1:51am
Quoting pips4life
Hi David,

I appreciate the fact that you're willing to share this tool with us......
Hi Pips4life,

Thanks for your comments. Ordinarily I’d be happy to implement many of your suggestions, when I get some spare time. However, from feedback that I get, I believe that there could be as many as 100 people already using Plot_News, and if I were to make changes to the way the dates were calculated, it might confuse them, if they’re already familiar with the current approach. If enough people wanted a change, then I’d definitely consider it, although see my comments about possible complications below.

Regarding your numbered points:

1 a) The time needs to be set to FF calendar time. To the best of my knowledge this is the same as New York time, but I’m not 100% sure how it works with daylight saving. FFcal.EXE calls a utility program (WGET) to retrieve a copy of the FF calendar’s HTML, exactly as is from the FF web site, and then works with whatever news event times are embedded in that. Whether that is NY time or not depends on how the FF web developers have coded the HTML, which is something I have no control over.

If I try to make the software too intelligent (e.g. understanding the daylight saving periods of every possible broker's time zone), then I'm creating more work for myself whenever anybody from governments to programmers change either the rules, or the source data, that I have to work with. From my point of view, it's simpler to keep things completely open-ended by simply allowing the user to enter any time offset that he wishes, and then he can adjust if necessary, by however many hours the news event symbols are displaced incorrectly on his charts. Please also keep in mind that I only want to maintain one version of the software for all users. It's simply too hard to manage otherwise.

b) I would be hesitant to do this, in case it confuses existing users who have gotten used to the current approach. It would mean that all existing users would need to learn the new rules, and modify their parameter settings accordingly. It would also make all existing documentation incorrect (possibly including earlier posts on this thread which I can no longer edit). However, if you want to conduct a poll here, I’d consider being swayed by a majority vote.

c) Thanks for suggesting these – I will include them in the documentation, when I get around to updating it.

d) Good point. I don’t know exactly how it works. Refer back to my comments in a).

e) Thanks, I will fix this when I get time.

2. One of the program’s consistencies is that all parameters (except "No of weeks data to download") all remain ‘sticky’ from one run to the next. If the date moves forward automatically, then if somebody wants to reload the data from last week, they would need to change it backward. So I guess it’s fair to say that it’s debatable as to which is the more user-friendly.

There are also other compelling reasons as to why it works the way that it does. It’s definitely safest to type a Sunday into this date, since this aligns with the FF calendar start-of-week. The reason is this: the program deletes all of the news events from the entered date, to the entered date + 6 days, based on MT4 time, before rebuilding them from FF. If you change the time offsets, and then re-load the data from the middle of the week, some of the news events might appear twice, at different start date/times, because they weren’t in the original date range that got deleted. Hope that makes sense.

The problem is that FFcal.EXE stores all events based on their calculated MT4 time rather than the FF calendar time (I did this originally becaused the latter is potentially vulnerable to FF web developer change). Anyway, I only discovered the problem mentioned in the last paragraph a few months ago, and if I was to change to FF calendar time it would mean adjusting every user’s historical database (with all of the possible daylight saving complications, depending on the broker’s time zone relative to daylight saving in NY). Hence I’ve never got around to fixing this. Much easier just to recommend that everybody downloads the calendar from Sunday to Sunday.

Trust me, the way the dates/times operate is more complicated than what it might initially appear!

3. Glad you sorted that one out.

Thanks again for the feedback.

David
  • #267
  • Apr 18, 2008 12:21am Apr 18, 2008 12:21am
Please see my embedded answers...

Quoting hanover
Hi Pips4life,

... from feedback that I get, I believe that there could be as many as 100 people already using Plot_News, and if I were to make changes to the way the dates were calculated, it might confuse them, ...

Believe me, I spent 20 years working for a high-tech software company and I was always aware of how changes would affect existing users. I gave some thought to it about how you could, for example, reverse the order of one of the time questions which would mean the answer must be flipped. For existing users, the change could be done automatically, but of course, if they remember the previous number the way it was, they'd have to be made aware that it changed sign... but still works.

Regarding auto-updating the starting date, I still really like this idea and I don't think existing users would mind a bit. If they are doing it correctly today, there are making the change manually, so I think they would appreciate the auto-update being done for them.

If enough people wanted a change, then I’d definitely consider it...

I've never run an FF poll before. Can anyone do that, or does the thread starter need to do it?


Regarding your numbered points:

1 a) The time needs to be set to FF calendar time. To the best of my knowledge this is the same as New York time, ... which is something I have no control over.

I'm pretty confident the FF calendar will display New York current time by default, and they make the DST change. Common 8:30AM news announcements still occur at the same time both before and after DST. I didn't change anything on Plot_News when it changed and it all just worked. However as I said, maybe other brokers are different from mine, but I'm lucky I guess.


If I try to make the software too intelligent (e.g. understanding the daylight saving periods of every possible broker's time zone), then I'm creating more work for myself whenever anybody from governments to programmers change either the rules, ...

I totally understand, and it's not worth it to code auto-DST changes. My main point was perhaps to set expectations of users that when NY/US changes DST time, they should double-check their brokers relative time to see if it shifted for them. No change in the code is warrented.


b) I would be hesitant to do this, in case it confuses existing users who have gotten used to the current approach. It would mean that all existing users would need to learn the new rules, and modify their parameter settings accordingly. It would also make all existing documentation incorrect (possibly including earlier posts on this thread which I can no longer edit). However, if you want to conduct a poll here, I’d consider being swayed by a majority vote.

I think if you change "FF calendar" to "New York", and if you add the descriptive comments about what each time setting affect, then it will reduce the problems/confusion that may occur upon initial setup. In that case, flipping the question order may not be a big deal... it's up to you. I don't know much about FF polling.

c) Thanks for suggesting these – I will include them in the documentation, when I get around to updating it.

Mentioned above.

d) Good point. I don’t know exactly how it works. Refer back to my comments in a).

Mentioned above.

e) Thanks, I will fix this when I get time.

I just realized that if the answer is negative, I might as well add 24 hours to make it positive. That's clear to me know, but was unclear to me before I understood that the local time vs. MT4 offset only affected the Description content. To me, I never even look at that local time so it's of no consequence to me if it's right or wrong.


2. One of the program’s consistencies is that all parameters (except "No of weeks data to download") all remain ‘sticky’ from one run to the next. If the date moves forward automatically, then if somebody wants to reload the data from last week, they would need to change it backward. So I guess it’s fair to say that it’s debatable as to which is the more user-friendly.

I know my wordy-example may be less than clear, but please understand that with my suggestion, then the starting date will ALWAYS reload the data from last week. The user wants to get the news results! However, there's no point in re-getting the same old completed weeks over and over again... hence, the form should first retrieve the data from the starting date and as a very last step before quiting, it should calculate what is the last Sunday's date and seed the form with that date the next time the user runs it. If that is 4 weeks later, then fine... he still re-retrieves what was then a week in progress, plus 3 more weeks up to the current week-in-progress.

It would be fine with me to always require "Sunday" starting dates, especially as that is cleaner. I don't understand all the ramifications of using different dates nor do I understand how the database might get corrupted and contain double-entries. I haven't run into it, although I suppose if I do, I will delete the current database and regenerate it (re-download many weeks).


There are also other compelling reasons as to why it works the way that it does. It’s definitely safest to type a Sunday into this date, since this aligns with the FF calendar start-of-week. The reason is this: the program deletes all of the news events from the entered date, to the entered date + 6 days, based on MT4 time, before rebuilding them from FF. If you change the time offsets, and then re-load the data from the middle of the week, some of the news events might appear twice, at different start date/times, because they weren’t in the original date range that got deleted. Hope that makes sense.

The problem is that FFcal.EXE stores all events based on their calculated MT4 time rather than the FF calendar time (I did this originally becaused the latter is potentially vulnerable to FF web developer change). Anyway, I only discovered the problem mentioned in the last paragraph a few months ago, and if I was to change to FF calendar time it would mean adjusting every user’s historical database (with all of the possible daylight saving complications, depending on the broker’s time zone relative to daylight saving in NY). Hence I’ve never got around to fixing this. Much easier just to recommend that everybody downloads the calendar from Sunday to Sunday.

Without my intending to, I was running Monday to Monday. The common look of US calendars has Sunday on the far left. Your calendar has Sunday as the last day on the far right. I will change mine to Sunday, although it has been working fine as it was.

Trust me, the way the dates/times operate is more complicated than what it might initially appear!

I can believe it, and thank you for taking the time to figure it out for this really handy program.


3. Glad you sorted that one out.

Thanks again for the feedback.

David

In closing, let me say that this tool is SO great that I think that many hundreds of FF users would find it useful to have... but the bar is a little high for getting it installed and setup properly. I'm an engineer and work with computers all the time, but there are plenty of folks who need it as simple as possible. That is one of the reasons behind my enhancement suggestions. The second reason, however, is that I do understand that if literally hundreds of more people installed this great tool... uh, we might overload the FF server with unnecessary re-downloading of weeks and weeks of the same data.

Bear in mind that I don't know how the database works. What I know is I want the current data, and I want the old data too. In the beginning, knowing nothing how it works, I assumed that I had to reload the same weeks over and over because it was building the database up. Over time, I learned that it appended to the database so it was fine to just load more recent weeks. Well, I know that I always want to re-load the old week (to get the result), and I want future weeks, so to me, it was always easiest to leave the starting date alone and just keep increasing number-of-weeks. I used January 1, 2008 and ~4 weeks per month for most of the start of this year. By now, that's 16 weeks! That's a wasteful burden on the server... and now I know. But if the program auto-changed the starting date and if it intelligently auto-set the number of weeks, then it's far easier for the user, and it's friendlier to the server... and if hundreds of users adopt the tool, then it's no problem.

That's where I'm coming from... thanks for reading and considering the changes.


Pips4life (Kent)

  • #268
  • Edited 4:32am Apr 18, 2008 2:45am | Edited 4:32am
Hi Pips4life,

By a poll, I meant that you could concisely post your suggestions here, and simply ask for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response from existing users.

However, I don’t really want to change things around too much if I can help it, for fear of introducing bugs. Because I’m busy working full-time now, I wouldn’t have much time for testing (increasing the potential risk), or retrospective fixes. I also don’t want to risk a raft of queries on the forum here, which will only create more work for me in responding.

The HTML version of the FF calendar doesn’t have the "Date and Time" settings (time zone offset and DST adjustment) applied to it. Try changing the "Date and Time" settings to something way off NY time, then save the web page and examine the HTML using an editor, and you’ll see what I mean.

Your points are arguably valid, but I really don’t have time to address those that might require complex re-programming, especially anything relating to the database key fields (MT4 date/time).

I don’t think it’s too much to ask users to advance the date once every weekend (there’s even a pop-up calendar allowing point-and-shoot), or that they work from a "Number of hours your local time is ahead (rather than behind) MT4" perspective. Provided that they download from FF once each weekend, there should never be a need (apart from initial set-up) to load more than one week’s data at a time.

Quoting pips4life
In closing, let me say that this tool is SO great that I think that many hundreds of FF users would find it useful to have... but the bar is a little high for getting it installed and setup properly. I'm an engineer and work with computers all the time, but there are plenty of folks who need it as simple as possible.
IMHO, the program works adequately the way that it is. If people believe that it’s useful enough, they will take the time to learn its peculiarities. Again, I would point out that it was never intended to be a commercial, shrink-wrapped offering. If users want simplicity of use (less parameters, more automation), there’s always Derk’s version here: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=19293

David

[EDIT] Sorry, I wrote the above when tired. Thanks for your kind comments about the software. I appreciate your taking such an interest in it. I just don't have the time or the inclination at the moment to make any significant modifications. When you write software, it's difficult to please everybody in every detail (but I guess that's stating the obvious!)
  • #269
  • Edited 4:05pm Apr 20, 2008 6:09am | Edited 4:05pm
The new version can be downloaded from Post #1 in this thread. It adds the following features:

1. The bug discovered by Pips4life (see below) has been fixed.
Quoting pips4life
e. FYI, I ran into a trivial bug...
My setting is "-9" for the 2nd time question re local time vs. MT4 time. Your program adds a space, making it "- 9". If I change ONLY the "9" to something else, the form will reject the change and silently make it "- 9"
again. That confused me for a bit when I thought I had made the change, hit "OK" but it made no difference. That's when I found the "bug". For me to actually change the value to, say "-8", I must replace all 3 characters "- 9" to "-8", and then my form change will stick.

2. Automatic setup facility, for first time users, has been added.
This works as follows, from the 'Build News.CSV' screen (obtained by pressing F5):

a) If FFcal.EXE detects that there are no news events in the Events History database, then it assumes you're running it for the very first time, hence it takes you directly to the new 'Initial Setup' screen.

b) On the updated 'Build News.CSV' screen, there is now a SETUP button (see screenshot below). Clicking this button will likewise take you to the new 'Initial Setup' screen. (This can be useful if you later need to adjust any of the date/time settings as the various time zones move into/out of daylight saving time).

c) On the 'Initial Setup' screen, follow the displayed instructions. You need only type in the hour (use 24-hr clock format) into the time fields. This will automatically calculate the time offset parameters, as shown. It also builds a dropdown box, allowing you to select the folder into which MT4 was installed, and pastes this entry back into the relevant field in the 'Build News.CSV' screen. Note that if you have MT4 installed anywhere other than directly under C:\Program Files then you will have to enter the path/filename 'manually' on the 'Build News.CSV' screen. Click OK (or press Enter) to have these updates saved; click Cancel (or press Esc) to have them discarded.

d) If the 'Initial Setup' screen is invoked, FFcal.EXE automatically assumes that you will want to load the most recent 4 weeks worth of news events into the Events History database (you can always press F9 to view the database). When you return to the 'Build News.CSV' screen, the 'Download data from FF calendar starting from what date' and 'Number of weeks worth of data to load' entries will be set accordingly. See section 3 for more information. Note that FFcal.Exe always assumes that the current week begins on the most recent Sunday.

Hence all a new user needs to do is run FFcal.EXE and press F5. He will be taken immediately to the 'Initial Setup' screen. All he needs to do is fill out the fields there, and click OK, and then click OK at the bottom left of the 'Build News.CSV' screen. That will automatically build the last 4 weeks of news.


3. New Auto Date set facility
This works as follows, from the 'Build News.CSV' screen (obtained by pressing F5):

a) If checked ON (see the screenshot below), this will automatically set up the 'Download data from FF calendar starting from what date' and 'Number of weeks worth of data to load' entries, every time this screen is invoked. FFcal.EXE checks to see what the last entry (date-wise) in its Event History is, and sets the parameters to retrieve all FF calendar-based news events from that date onwards, up until the current week (Sunday thru Saturday). If there is no data in the Events History, then action is taken as described in step 2 (d) above. If the Events History is completely up to date, then the parameters are set to retrieve data for the current week. To override the entries, check the 'Auto set' box OFF.

b) If checked OFF, the program runs exactly as before, i.e. the 'Download data from FF calendar starting from what date' and 'Number of weeks worth of data to load' entries must be manually set, and their defaults remain 'sticky' from one run to the next.

Hence, by checking this box ON, FFcal.EXE will automatically attempt to keep its News Events history up to date. All you need to do is click OK at the bottom left of the screen.

Hope all this makes sense. I haven't tested this exhaustively yet; please report any bugs, or post any questions, here. I will release any necessary fixes in v 1.24.

CAUTION! Please note that by downloading v 1.23, your Events History database will be overwritten (emptied). Don't forget to back it up prior to installing v 1.23, and then restoring it afterward, if you want to keep your existing history. See post #1 in this thread for more details.

A final reminder: I accept no liability for any losses or damage resulting from the use of this software. Please read the full disclaimer in post #1.

David
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  • #270
  • Apr 20, 2008 6:28am Apr 20, 2008 6:28am
Quoting pips4life
That's where I'm coming from... thanks for reading and considering the changes.
Hi Pips4life,

Well, I've succumbed to the temptation to implement much of this, albeit in my own way, as I've tried to leave the existing functionality intact, so that existing users won't need to re-educate themselves. Hence I've added these as new features. Whether this makes FFcal.EXE more user-friendly, or simply adds more buttons to an already daunting interface, is (IMHO) debatable.

Just saw your comment:
"I just realized that if the answer is negative, I might as well add 24 hours to make it positive. That's clear to me know, but was unclear to me before I understood that the local time vs. MT4 offset only affected the Description content. To me, I never even look at that local time so it's of no consequence to me if it's right or wrong."
To be strictly correct, you should enter the negative number, if your local time is behind MT4's. The info bubble displays both the date and the time, and adding 24 hours will make the date incorrect.

David
  • #271
  • Apr 20, 2008 3:53pm Apr 20, 2008 3:53pm
Quoting hanover
The new version can be downloaded from Post #1 in this thread. It adds the following features:
........

2. Automatic setup facility, for first time users, has been added.
This works as follows, from the 'Build News.CSV' screen (obtained by pressing F5):
........

c) On the 'Initial Setup' screen, follow the displayed instructions. You need only type in the hour (use 24-hr clock format) into the time fields. This will automatically calculate the time offset parameters, as shown. It also builds a dropdown box, allowing you to select the folder into which MT4 was installed, and pastes this entry back into the relevant field in the 'Build News.CSV' screen. Note that if you have MT4 installed anywhere other than C:\Program Files then you will have to enter the path/filename 'manually' on the 'Build News.CSV' screen.
........
[/quote]

Re the displaying of the folders into the dropdown box: this is working correctly with Win-98 (where my development tools are based), but not yet with Windows XP.
I will fix this in version 1.24.

David
  • #272
  • Apr 20, 2008 5:05pm Apr 20, 2008 5:05pm
Wow David! You really went far beyond the call of duty. Many thanks.

My comments:

1. (This probably has nothing to do with your program, but maybe the FF site??? or my computer/network???) FYI, I was unable to download the FFcal123.zip file using Internet Explorer. I tried two different computers. Each time the download would supposedly complete and yet it was far smaller size that the original, and an un-zip would fail because it was corrupted. Each download was a different size, every time. For kicks I also tried downloading the doc file and it too had problems. I've rebooted my router and cable modem to no avail. However, Mozilla worked just fine.

2. I unzipped the FFcal123.zip file into it's own directory. I wanted to start fresh with no previous files. I set aside my news.csv file as well. I ran FFcal.exe, and it immediately poped up the Initial Setup form which is great!

3. I like the URL feature. Only thing might be that by default (not having configured that site myself before just now), it displays 12 hr AM/PM format which may throw off some users. Might want to explicitely say give answers in 24hr format.

Better still, here's a URL in 24-hour format you might consider:
http://www.worldtimezone.com/time/wt...0182&forma=24h


FYI, over the weekend when the market is closed, one cannot get the current MT4 time by looking at the last candles on a chart, and in your setup form, you do say when the market is open, do... (your steps). However your method described in earlier posts to look at the Market Watch window, and right-mouse-click to turn on the "Time" option works great even over the weekend but it only gives the HH:MM but not the MM/DD/YYYY (as does the candle method). I guess this is FYI; I'd probably leave your instructions as-is because most will do this during market-open hours. Maybe you should bold these words on your text: While the market is open, load any...

Once I filled in the times, it did indeed come up with the right calculations very easily. This is a simple yet big improvement!!

4. The section to fill out the MT4 directory was a little tough without having a popup file/dir browser window. Can this be added, similar to other typical windows apps? (There is an arrow to the far right which I would think was to browse but it pops up a list of blank lines). Also FYI, I was only able to type in all capitals. I'm not sure if there is any case-sensitivity issue or not, because it did appear to work. However, you do make a point to say users "must be 100% accurate" so you might just say "Case is ignored." if the letters are going to be capitalized no matter what. (Nitpicking a bit here, forgive me. It's OK as is).


5. I loved the initial starting date filled out as a Sunday 3 weeks ago and a default of pulling 4 weeks. ( I might prefer 5 to get one extra future week but this is good).

6. With the form filled out, I clicked "OK" to generate the 4 weeks of data. It appeared to run at first, probably with 4 command popups as usual, but then it crashed... the popup says:

Runtime error
Corrupt block/Unknown block type freed. This is probably caused by freeing a static variable or a bad pointer.
Do you want to GPF?
Yes/No

(I have no idea what "GPF" means but I said yes)
Then it said FFcal.exe needs to close and do I want to report it to MS? (no) (then later, "yes", then later "debug" but they all seem the same).


HOWEVER... it did generate the news.csv file! Plot_News still worked to display the arrows in the proper place (and I had removed my older news.csv file before running this so I'm sure this was a new file).

UPDATE: I set aside my FFcal123 directory, un-zipped the files again, deleted my news.csv file in experts/files, and tried it again. This time it completed the Initial Setup Form and the first "OK" just fine. But the NEXT time I ran FFcal.exe, I got the same error message. Then ran it once more, and again same error. So there is some persistent bug.

It occurs to me to ask where do you store the saved form defaults? When I look in my FFcal123 directory, I can't see any recently changed files (I'm checking the "Date Modified" column; and yes, I think I'm displaying hidden files and hidden system files and for the life of me, I can't figure out where/how you're storing the form defaults).


7. I re-ran FFcal.exe. The form came up with the starting date shifted automatically to Sunday April 20 (but that's the same day as today, so I can double-check how it will work tomorrow to be sure it's fine). The number of weeks is "1".

I clicked OK, and the form ran and completed without error (Update: sometimes no error, other times there is).


8. I ran FFcal.exe once again, and this time, I changed it back one Sunday to April 13, and set the number of weeks to 2. Uh oh, I only saw a single command window popup, meaning it only downloaded 1 week. Oh... OK. Now I see that when I chose April 13 using the calendar popup, it did appear to take my entry, but when I changed my cursor to another field, the date snapped back to April 20 which I didn't see. Similarly, I can see that if I change the number-of-weeks to "2", it will change it back to "1" as soon as I click anywhere else. This is obviously because of the "Auto set" checkbox being set. This interaction would be much more clear if you did one of the following two things:

a) As long as "Auto set" is checked, then gray-out the starting date and number of weeks fields. Gray-out is well known to be non-editable. When the user turns off "Auto set", they should become white and editable.

or b) If I attempt to manually edit either of the starting date or the number-of-weeks fields, then have the form itself turn off the "Auto set" button. You can decide if this should be a sticky user choice that persists the next time the user runs FFcal.exe, or if you want to make it persistent for that session only, but turn it on the next session -- your decision. (As if it was ever anything else... lol).



9. There is one nuance to the auto-date setting that I'd like you to consider, and maybe this has to do with the risk of double entries which I don't fully understand, so if so, just let me know.


I turned off "Auto set". I set it to April 13, and 3 weeks which ran fine. Then I opened the form and turned back on "Auto set". What I expected and would like is for it to fill in the starting date as "April 20", but it was instead set to "April 27". That means that unless I intervene and once again turn off "Auto set" and do my own custom date, then I won't be re-loading the current week of April 20 any more, so, I will be missing out on the actual news results. What I would prefer is for "Auto set" to ALWAYS choose the last (most recent past) Sunday's date.


Thanks David for making these changes. Apart from little glitches, this is looking really good.

Pips4life (Kent)
  • #273
  • Edited 2:44am Apr 21, 2008 1:36am | Edited 2:44am
My responses in red typeface.

Quoting pips4life
Wow David! You really went far beyond the call of duty. Many thanks.

My comments:

1. (This probably has nothing to do with your program, but maybe the FF site??? or my computer/network???) FYI, I was unable to download the FFcal123.zip file using Internet Explorer. I tried two different computers. Each time the download would supposedly complete and yet it was far smaller size that the original, and an un-zip would fail because it was corrupted. Each download was a different size, every time. For kicks I also tried downloading the doc file and it too had problems. I've rebooted my router and cable modem to no avail. However, Mozilla worked just fine.
I don't understand this. It was uploaded using Mozilla from my WIn-98 PC, but I've just managed a successful download using IE v7 on my Win-XP computer.

2. I unzipped the FFcal123.zip file into it's own directory. I wanted to start fresh with no previous files. I set aside my news.csv file as well. I ran FFcal.exe, and it immediately poped up the Initial Setup form which is great!

3. I like the URL feature. Only thing might be that by default (not having configured that site myself before just now), it displays 12 hr AM/PM format which may throw off some users. Might want to explicitely say give answers in 24hr format.
You can change the format to 24-hour at their web site.

Better still, here's a URL in 24-hour format you might consider:
http://www.worldtimezone.com/time/wt...0182&forma=24h

FYI, over the weekend when the market is closed, one cannot get the current MT4 time by looking at the last candles on a chart, and in your setup form, you do say when the market is open, do... (your steps). However your method described in earlier posts to look at the Market Watch window, and right-mouse-click to turn on the "Time" option works great even over the weekend but it only gives the HH:MM but not the MM/DD/YYYY (as does the candle method). I guess this is FYI; I'd probably leave your instructions as-is because most will do this during market-open hours. Maybe you should bold these words on your text: While the market is open, load any...
My understanding was that both the Market Watch and charts displayed the time when the market was last open. Hence one method was just as good as the other. I favored the charts because it seemed more intuitive, and gave the date as well as the time.

Once I filled in the times, it did indeed come up with the right calculations very easily. This is a simple yet big improvement!!
Glad to hear it!

4. The section to fill out the MT4 directory was a little tough without having a popup file/dir browser window. Can this be added, similar to other typical windows apps? (There is an arrow to the far right which I would think was to browse but it pops up a list of blank lines). Also FYI, I was only able to type in all capitals. I'm not sure if there is any case-sensitivity issue or not, because it did appear to work. However, you do make a point to say users "must be 100% accurate" so you might just say "Case is ignored." if the letters are going to be capitalized no matter what. (Nitpicking a bit here, forgive me. It's OK as is).
a) The dropdown doesn't work correctly with Win-XP (see my comment in post #280).
b) I will change the field to allow lowercase characters in v 1.24. Although you are correct - case is unimportant.

5. I loved the initial starting date filled out as a Sunday 3 weeks ago and a default of pulling 4 weeks. ( I might prefer 5 to get one extra future week but this is good).

6. With the form filled out, I clicked "OK" to generate the 4 weeks of data. It appeared to run at first, probably with 4 command popups as usual, but then it crashed... the popup says:

Runtime error
Corrupt block/Unknown block type freed. This is probably caused by freeing a static variable or a bad pointer.
Do you want to GPF?
Yes/No

(I have no idea what "GPF" means but I said yes)
Then it said FFcal.exe needs to close and do I want to report it to MS? (no) (then later, "yes", then later "debug" but they all seem the same).
I haven't yet been able to reproduce this error. I will perform significantly more testing before releasing v 1.24.

HOWEVER... it did generate the news.csv file! Plot_News still worked to display the arrows in the proper place (and I had removed my older news.csv file before running this so I'm sure this was a new file).

UPDATE: I set aside my FFcal123 directory, un-zipped the files again, deleted my news.csv file in experts/files, and tried it again. This time it completed the Initial Setup Form and the first "OK" just fine. But the NEXT time I ran FFcal.exe, I got the same error message. Then ran it once more, and again same error. So there is some persistent bug.
Thanks, I will try this sequence of events.

It occurs to me to ask where do you store the saved form defaults? When I look in my FFcal123 directory, I can't see any recently changed files (I'm checking the "Date Modified" column; and yes, I think I'm displaying hidden files and hidden system files and for the life of me, I can't figure out where/how you're storing the form defaults).
Should be in a file called FFcal.INI in the same folder you're running FFcal.EXE from.

7. I re-ran FFcal.exe. The form came up with the starting date shifted automatically to Sunday April 20 (but that's the same day as today, so I can double-check how it will work tomorrow to be sure it's fine). The number of weeks is "1".

I clicked OK, and the form ran and completed without error (Update: sometimes no error, other times there is).


8. I ran FFcal.exe once again, and this time, I changed it back one Sunday to April 13, and set the number of weeks to 2. Uh oh, I only saw a single command window popup, meaning it only downloaded 1 week. Oh... OK. Now I see that when I chose April 13 using the calendar popup, it did appear to take my entry, but when I changed my cursor to another field, the date snapped back to April 20 which I didn't see. Similarly, I can see that if I change the number-of-weeks to "2", it will change it back to "1" as soon as I click anywhere else. This is obviously because of the "Auto set" checkbox being set. This interaction would be much more clear if you did one of the following two things:

a) As long as "Auto set" is checked, then gray-out the starting date and number of weeks fields. Gray-out is well known to be non-editable. When the user turns off "Auto set", they should become white and editable.
Yes, if Auto set is checked, it will change the date & number of weeks automatically, even if you've already changed them manually. I will gray-out as you suggested.

or b) If I attempt to manually edit either of the starting date or the number-of-weeks fields, then have the form itself turn off the "Auto set" button. You can decide if this should be a sticky user choice that persists the next time the user runs FFcal.exe, or if you want to make it persistent for that session only, but turn it on the next session -- your decision. (As if it was ever anything else... lol).
My plan was to leave Auto set checked ON, until the user decides to check it OFF. That way the user should never need to worry about altering the date, as FFcal.EXE will automatically bring its history up to date, from where it previously left off. If the history is up to date (i.e. last news event is dated today or a future date), then the auto set will default to a re-load of the current week.

9. There is one nuance to the auto-date setting that I'd like you to consider, and maybe this has to do with the risk of double entries which I don't fully understand, so if so, just let me know.

I turned off "Auto set". I set it to April 13, and 3 weeks which ran fine. Then I opened the form and turned back on "Auto set". What I expected and would like is for it to fill in the starting date as "April 20", but it was instead set to "April 27". That means that unless I intervene and once again turn off "Auto set" and do my own custom date, then I won't be re-loading the current week of April 20 any more, so, I will be missing out on the actual news results. What I would prefer is for "Auto set" to ALWAYS choose the last (most recent past) Sunday's date.
Yes, I will change it to do this. The decision process should then work as follows:

a) If there is no data in the History file, run the "Initial Setup" screen, and then after OK is clicked, the "Build News.CSV" screen will return, with the Auto set checked ON, and defaulting to loading the last 3 weeks history (a week being defined as Sunday to Saturday), plus the current week (i.e. Number of weeks parameter = 4).

b) If there is history, and the last record is dated today or later, then "Download data from FF calendar starting from what date" will default to the most recent Sunday, and "Number of weeks data to load" to 1, so that the current week's data will be re-loaded.

c) If there is history, and the last record is dated earlier than today, then "Download data from FF calendar starting from what date" will revert to the Sunday before that date, and "Number of weeks data to load" to whatever value is needed to ensure that all data is loaded from that date, up to and including the current week (i.e. until the coming Saturday).

Thanks David for making these changes. Apart from little glitches, this is looking really good.
I will try to get more testing done this coming weekend, and hopefully be in a position to release v 1.24.

Pips4life (Kent)
  • #274
  • Apr 21, 2008 10:54am Apr 21, 2008 10:54am
Quoting pips4life
.........
1. (This probably has nothing to do with your program, but maybe the FF site??? or my computer/network???) FYI, I was unable to download the FFcal123.zip file using Internet Explorer. I tried two different computers. Each time the download would supposedly complete and yet it was far smaller size that the original, and an un-zip would fail because it was corrupted. Each download was a different size, every time. For kicks I also tried downloading the doc file and it too had problems. I've rebooted my router and cable modem to no avail. However, Mozilla worked just fine.
.........
6. With the form filled out, I clicked "OK" to generate the 4 weeks of data. It appeared to run at first, probably with 4 command popups as usual, but then it crashed... the popup says:

Runtime error
Corrupt block/Unknown block type freed. This is probably caused by freeing a static variable or a bad pointer.
Do you want to GPF?
Yes/No

(I have no idea what "GPF" means but I said yes)
Then it said FFcal.exe needs to close and do I want to report it to MS? (no) (then later, "yes", then later "debug" but they all seem the same).


HOWEVER... it did generate the news.csv file! Plot_News still worked to display the arrows in the proper place (and I had removed my older news.csv file before running this so I'm sure this was a new file).

UPDATE: I set aside my FFcal123 directory, un-zipped the files again, deleted my news.csv file in experts/files, and tried it again. This time it completed the Initial Setup Form and the first "OK" just fine. But the NEXT time I ran FFcal.exe, I got the same error message. Then ran it once more, and again same error. So there is some persistent bug.
..........
Hi Pips4life,

I've implemented all of the changes that you suggested.

Additionally, FFcal.EXE now jumps to the "Build.CSV" screen (or the "Initial Setup" screen, the first time it is run) immediately the program is run, i.e. it's as if F5 has been pressed automatically.

All of these modifications will be released in v 1.24.

However, I haven't managed to reproduce the errors you described in points 1 and 6; point 6 in particular concerns me. Hence I will continue my testing, and hopefully be able to release v 1.24 soon.

Thanks for all your feedback.

David
  • #275
  • Apr 22, 2008 3:55pm Apr 22, 2008 3:55pm
Hi everybody,

I'm almost ready to release v 1.24, which addresses most of the enhancements requested by Pips4life (see prior posts).

However, no matter how I try, I can't reproduce the crash error that he describes:

6. With the form filled out, I clicked "OK" to generate the 4 weeks of data. It appeared to run at first, probably with 4 command popups as usual, but then it crashed... the popup says:

Runtime error

Corrupt block/Unknown block type freed. This is probably caused by freeing a static variable or a bad pointer.

Do you want to GPF?

Yes/No

(I have no idea what "GPF" means but I said yes)

Then it said FFcal.exe needs to close and do I want to report it to MS? (no) (then later, "yes", then later "debug" but they all seem the same).

HOWEVER... it did generate the news.csv file! Plot_News still worked to display the arrows in the proper place (and I had removed my older news.csv file before running this so I'm sure this was a new file).

UPDATE: I set aside my FFcal123 directory, un-zipped the files again, deleted my news.csv file in experts/files, and tried it again. This time it completed the Initial Setup Form and the first "OK" just fine. But the NEXT time I ran FFcal.exe, I got the same error message. Then ran it once more, and again same error. So there is some persistent bug.

Just wondered if anybody else who's installed v 1.23 is experiencing a similar problem?

I would like to get this sorted out before I release v 1.24.

Many thanks for any feedback.

David
  • #276
  • Apr 23, 2008 7:25am Apr 23, 2008 7:25am
Quote
I would like to get this sorted out before I release v 1.24.

Many thanks for any feedback.

David

Hi Dave,

Since I was using the version 1.23, it helps me much coz it's easier, not only for me, but as well as my little brother, who can use it immediately once he's reading your detailed guide lines.

So it may perhaps that there's some other problem occur instead of the one you've made.

Hope that it could help you and others not to be confused.

Thanks a lot and much appreciation for you Dave.
Jodie Forex at its Best
  • #277
  • Edited 2:31pm Apr 24, 2008 2:00pm | Edited 2:31pm
The new version can be downloaded from Post #1 in this thread.

It has been modified with a view to making the initial setup as automatic and user-friendly as possible.

The main operational change is that you should now run the file FFcstart.BAT instead of FFcal.EXE. The new application performs some file housekeeping automatically for you. However, existing users may continue to run FFcal.EXE, without any ill effects, if they wish.

Note that whenever the application is run, you will now be taken directly to the 'Build News.CSV from FF calendar' screen, without the need to press F5. Also, whenever the News Event History is updated, you will be taken directly to the News Event History display screen, without the need to press F9.

The new setup and operational instructions appear in more detail in post #1 of this thread.

Please note that I have done my best to test all of this on both my Win-98 and Win-XP platforms, which run firewalls and anti-virus software. However, you download and run this software at your own risk. I accept no liability for any damage or losses that you might incur.

Please feel welcome to report any bugs, or post any questions, in this thread.

David
  • #278
  • Apr 26, 2008 5:06pm Apr 26, 2008 5:06pm
Hi everybody,

I hope to release v 1.25 within the next few days.

This will allow you to plot graphs of economic data (sourced from FF calendar) in separate windows on your MT4 charts. For example, it will graph the changes of Interest Rate (or any other economic indicator(s) that you specify) in separate window(s) below the main price chart, allowing you to view the effect that economic changes/trends had on price. Since these indicators are released infrequently (i.e. weekly, monthly), these graphs will only be meaningful when viewed in the higher time frames (D1, W1, MN).

A new indicator (Plot_External_Data.MQ4) will be released to facilitate this. This indicator will be generic enough to allow you to plot any non-TA data that you wish, provided that you manually create a Data.CSV file in the correct CSV format. (Of course the FFcal.EXE program will be modified to automatically output any economic indicator values in the correct format). The Plot_External_Data.MQ4 indicator may be attached to a price chart multiple times, to allow multiple economic indicators to be displayed on the same chart, either in the same, or different, windows (just like any other MT4 indicator).

As a spin-off, FFcal.EXE’s Export facilities will be extended to allow you to select which columns (Date, Time, Currency, Description, Impact, etc) you wish to output; and also there will be a "numbers only" option, which will convert values like "–12.3M" to meaningful numbers like –12300000, allowing math functions to be directly performed on them (useful if you’re exporting ultimately to Excel, for example).

v 1.26 is also in the pipeline. It will extend this facility further, allowing profiles to be created for groups of economic indicators, so that you will only need to run FFcal.EXE once in order to simultaneously export up-to-date data for multiple economic indicators. By creating a suitable template in MT4, all of the economic data will then automatically update itself on your MT4 charts.

Watch this space!

David
  • #279
  • Apr 27, 2008 7:08am Apr 27, 2008 7:08am
Quoting hanover
Hi everybody,

I hope to release v 1.25 within the next few days.

David
Hi David,

You should be the one that we thank for your best effort to this community.
Hope that everyone else will do the same.

God Bless you David.
Jodie Forex at its Best
  • #280
  • Edited 12:55pm Apr 27, 2008 12:21pm | Edited 12:55pm
Quoting jhp2025
Hi David,

You should be the one that we thank for your best effort to this community.
Hope that everyone else will do the same.

God Bless you David.
Many thanks, Jodie. I appreciate the feedback.

Below is a screenshot, illustrating v 1.25's capability. The data was sourced automatically from FF calendar. The Plot_External_Data.MQ4 indicator can also be used to plot anything you wish (e.g. price of gold, 90 day interest rate, S & P 500 index, COT values, etc), provided that you maintain a CSV file with the necessary data: date/time, and value.

You will be able to plot as many items as you wish on your chart, in separate windows (as shown in the screenshot), or overlaying each other in the same window. As with any data, you can then apply technical studies (e.g. moving averages) to the data.

I will release v 1.25 as soon as I finish testing.

David
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