There are some significant(to me) changes with how the current release of DTNIQ
handles Time & Sales title bars, of all things. Probably nothing you all ever
thought of, but it makes a noticeable diff to me, as not everyone runs this stuff
in ways you might expect. Details:

* I use a lot of T&S windows for tick data and 1 minute data. Equities and option names.
I want easy, realtime access to historical tick/minute data during the trading day and
DTNIQ works very well for this.

* Way too much stuff to deal with manually...so, off I went, looking for some help...

* I tried DTNIQ 'Workspaces' to help manage these but it's inadequate because it won't
remember T&S window size and placement on my monitors. It also won't allow for mixing
of Tick and Minute data - all of the windows created have to be one data type and size only.
And, lastly, I can't create two separate workgroups; open one and then piggyback the
second on top of it. Each workgroup started up wipes out ALL T&S windows currently open.
If I wanna open 30 windows, all I get are 30 windows of the same data type dumped into the
middle of my screen. Same location, same size. No help in sizing and positioning these
windows anywhere or mixing tick/minute data types.

* So, to get around all of these issues, I now use a Windows Macro generator called Autohotkey
(AutoHotkey.com) to crank all of this up for me. Very powerful macro language. I can have
it create whatever data type selection I want, fill in stock/option names, move the windows
where I want 'em and resize, if necessary. Very nice. Just fire off some routines, no
thinking required.

* To manage and move around my T&S windows, I name some of them via changing the Title Bar
name. This also makes them easier to read and comprehend, compared to the default options name.
For example, an AAPL 560c option for Dec 06, 2013 expiration window normally comes up with
a Title Bar name of 'AAPL1306L560 - Time & Sales'. Quite a mouthful. Note that the title
does not indicate whether it's tick data or minute data. You have look at the data itself
or in the small white data type section at the top of the window. So, I might name the window
'AAPL-560c-Tick' or 'AAPL-560c-Minute' for ease of viewing. Very handy. Also, very easy
to find individual windows for macro usage, such as screen placement and sizing.

Built my Autohotkey code around this and everything worked fine...until it didn't.

* I migrated from DTNIQ 2.7.0.3 to the current release of 2.10.0.5 and all hell broke loose.

Here's the laundry list of what's wrong and what I'd like to see changed, either back to the
way it used to work or fixed so it works correctly to begin with. I might mention that I browsed
ALL of the release notes up to the current level and -nothing- was mentioned about Title Bars.


If it's worth changing, it's worth mentioning in the release notes.


You have no way of knowing the various ways in which your customer base uses this software.
I may be the only person doing what I'm doing, but what matters -to me- is that there's
some consistency between releases. Took me a couple hours that I didn't have at the time
to rework my code, and it's still not quite right.

* First up, when I open a new/blank T&S window, the title is 'Time and Sales'. However,
when I fill it up with data, the window is now 'xxxx - Time & Sales'. The blank window
should be 'Time & Sales' to begin with...someone probably didn't notice this when making
the change over. The old version always listed the title as 'Time and Sales'; no '&'.
So, change the blank/empty T&S window title from 'Time and Sales' to 'Time & Sales' to
be consistent.

* Next, someone decided to flip flop the order of the title components. It used to read
something like 'Time and Sales - AAPL1306L560'...now, it's 'AAPL1306L560 - Time & Sales'.
No consistency. Now, I can live with this, as it's a one time change to my code.
What is really not cool is:

* The old release would retain my add-on ('AAPL-560c-Tick') when I clicked on the green refresh
icon button at the top. Now, it wipes out everything and dumps 'AAPL1306L560 - Time & Sales' back
into the title bar. This means I have to -manually- rename a T&S window everytime I do
a refresh. Inconvenient, to say the least. Under the old 2.7.0.3 DTNIQ code, clicking on
refresh would change the title bar to 'AAPL-560C-Tick - AAPL1306L560'.
Workable, as my title was still buried in there somewhere, so I could continue to find it and
manipulate the window with my autohotkey code.


So, net out of the above is that I'd like to see some consistency in naming conventions for
T&S windows and most of all, some retaining of a name change I might do, whenever I click on the
refresh icon. I can live with any order, but it needs to work correctly and remain the same from
release to release.


What I'd recommend most would be to come up with a title that lists the THREE title components
that matter, which are the stock/options symbol name, 'Time & Sales' logo, and new-to-DTINQ,
the type of data captured in a particular window, such as 'Tick', '1 Minute', '2 Minute',
'Daily', 'Weekly', etc.

Examples:

'AAPL1306L560 - Time & Sales - Tick'
'AAPL1306L560 - Time & Sales - 5 Minute'
'AAPL - Time & Sales - Daily'

This way, each title is more unique and better describes what's being captured. And, for users
who don't go through the gyrations I do, when they hover their cursor over the Windows tray,
popping up a laundry list of T&S window names, they wouldn't have to wonder what type of data
a particular window shows. Try it yourself: create a bunch of T&S windows, use the same
name 'AAPL', throw in 5-6 time intervals, minimize some/all of them, then hover your cursor
on the Windows tray and try to figure out what you have...not so easy, is it?

I usually have ~60 of these tick/minute T&S windows open during the trading day. Way too much
to have splattered across my screens, so I minimize them and bring them up when needed. I have
some automation to do this for me and it works very well. But, as listed above, I need something
unique to each window to allow the automation to figure out what's what. As of now, I now
longer can do that.


Questions on any of this, lemme know...

ALL fixed now and working just fine...title bars work even better than before in the old 2.7.0.3 release I was using.

See post in other section:

http://forums.dtniq.com/index.cfm?page=topic&topicID=3741