AmiBroker 6.22.0 BETA Read Me

April 30, 2017 17:26

THIS IS A BETA VERSION OF THE SOFTWARE. EXPECT BUGS !!!

Backup your data files and entire AmiBroker folder first!

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

First you need to have full version of AmiBroker 6.20 installed. Then just run the BETA installer and follow the instructions.

Then run AmiBroker. You should see "AmiBroker 6.22.0" written in the About box.

See CHANGE LOG below for detailed list of changes. Note that only changes that affect end-user directly are listed here. Internal code changes/refactoring is usually not mentioned.

UPGRADE POLICY: This version is a free upgrade for users who purchased AmiBroker license after April 30, 2015.

6.22 FEATURE HIGHLIGHT:

This version is experimental because we are migrating 64-bit version to brand new compiler (VC++ 2017). Such migrations pretty often brings some compatibility risks therefore backup is highly recommended (although you can always go back by just installing previous version). We needed to migrate not only the program itself but many internal libraries taking care not to break backward compatibility.

Note that migration does NOT affect 32-bit version. It is still compiled with old compiler.

Why do we migrate to new compiler with 64-bit version?

1. New compiler supports new CPU instructions (SSE3/AVX) that we can use to offer better performance
2. According to our tests new compiler support produces faster code by itself (better optimizations, auto-vectorization, etc)
3. New compiler is better with error checking (less bugs to slip through)
4. We don't need to care about compatibility with pre-Vista systems in 64-bits version and all 64-bit capable CPUs are "modern" enough.

Why do we stay with old compiler in 32-bit version?

1. New compiler does not produce code compatible with older operating systems (XP or earlier). Old compiler offers 100% compatibility with all Windows versions
2. New compiler requires modern CPUs

Exact performance improvement is function dependent and hardware dependent. Many functions are faster by 30-50% but in some cases such as Min()/Max() functions as large as 8x speed up can be observed in 64-bit version.

6.21 FEATURE HIGHLIGHT:

This version features preliminary support for native chart GUI (buttons and edits at the moment). Please be resonable with Gui* functions and be aware of Windows limits.
As all controls in Windows (buttons, edit boxes, etc) are actual Window objects they are subject to Windows limitation.
And there is a limit of 10000 windows PER PROCESS. So don't try to create thousands of buttons (like a button for every bar of data) because
first you will see huge performance decrease and next you will hit the limit and run into problems (crash)
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070718-00/?p=25963

Best practice is to keep the number under 100-200.

If you need more consider using low-level graphics instead.

Here is a sample formula that shows basic usage of Gui* functions:

GuiButton( "Custom button", 1, 10, 40, 100, 30, 7 );
GuiButton( "Dynamic "+Date(), 2, 120, 40, 150, 30, 7 );
GuiButton( "System button", 3, 320, 40, 100, 30, 7 );
GuiEdit( 5, 450, 40, 100, 20, 31 );

GuiSetColors( 1, 3, 2, colorRed, colorBlack, colorRed, colorWhite, colorBlue, colorYellow, colorRed, colorBlack, colorYellow );
GuiSetColors( 3, 3, 0 ); // default (system) look

editText = GuiGetText( 5 );

Title = "Text entered: " + editText + "\nLast event: " + GuiGetEvent( 0, 2 );

id = GuiGetEvent( 0, 0 );
event = GuiGetEvent( 0, 1 );

if( id == 3 && event == 1 ) GuiSetText("Button clicked",5);

CHANGE LOG

CHANGES FOR VERSION 6.22.0 (as compared to 6.21.0)

• 64-bit: migrated all code to new compiler VC++2017 which seems to produce better code for x64 resulting in 30...50% speed improvements for many AFL functions. The only negative seems to be much bigger runtime libs
• 64-bit: AFL: Sum() function 2x faster
• 64-bit: AFL: Max() and Min() functions 8x faster
• 64-bit: AFL: Ref() funciton 2x faster
• 64-bit: AFL: MACD(), ROC(), StDev(), LinearReg() and many other functions faster by 30-50%
• AFL: GetExtraData does not trigger code check and profile warning about referencing future quotes if plugin implements new GetExtraDataEx function
• AFL: GuiEdit complained about 2nd parameter instead of 1st (being less than zero)

CHANGES FOR VERSION 6.21.0 (as compared to 6.20.1)

• AFL: decreased memory fragmentation when user changes type of variable from array to scalar and back thousands of times
• AFL: GuiButton( "Text", id, x, y, width , height , notifyflags ) - creates a button
  "Text" is a text to be displayed on the button
  x, y are pixel coordinates of top-left corner of the control
  width, height are pixel width and height of the control

  notifyflags - decides which events fire execution of your formula, it can be any combination of values below
  1 - clicked (button)
  2 - setfocus (all)
  4 - killfocus (all)
  8 - hit enter/return key (edit)
  16 - edit change (edit)

• AFL: GuiEdit( id, x, y, width, height, notifyflags ); - creates an edit field
  x, y are pixel coordinates of top-left corner of the control
  width, height are pixel width and height of the control

  notifyflags - decides which events fire execution of your formula, it can be any combination of values below
  1 - clicked (button)
  2 - setfocus (all)
  4 - killfocus (all)
  8 - hit enter/return key (edit)
  16 - edit change (edit)

• AFL: GuiGetEvent( num, what = 0 )
  what = 0 - ID of control that received event (number)
  what = 1 - the notification code (number)
  what = 2 - the ID, the code and the notification description as text (string)

  num parameter defines the index of notification in the queue. 0 is first received (or "oldest") since last execution.

  Usually there is zero (when formula execution was not triggered by UI event) or one event in the queue but
  note that there can be MORE than one event notification in the queue if your formula is slow to process. To retrieve them all use increasing "num" parameter as long as GuiGetEvent does not return zero (in what =0, =1 mode) or empty string (what=2).

  
  // read all pending events
  for( i = 0; id = GuiGetEvent( i ); i++ )
  {
  code = GuiGetEvent( i, 1 );
  text = GuiGetEvent( i, 2 );
  }

• AFL: GuiGetText( id ) - get text from control
• AFL: GuiSetColors( idFrom, idTo, border , clrText = -1, clrBack = -1, clrBorder = -1, clrSelText = -1, clrSelBack = -1, clrSelBorder = -1, clrHoverText = -1, clrHoverBack = -1, clrHoverBorder = -1, clrDisText = -1, clrDisBack = -1, clrDisBorder = -1)
  
  idFrom, idTo - define range of control IDs that will use new colors. To set color for single control use the same value for both idFrom and idTo
  border - defines border width of button (does not affect other control types)

  clrText, clrBack, clrBorder - define colors of control text (fgcolor), background (bgcolor) and border (if border width is > 0 ) in "default" control state (unselected)
  selectfgcolor. -1 means colorDefault and if all colors are set to default then control uses SYSTEM (Windows) look

  clrSelText, clrSelBack, clrSelBorder - define colors in selected state
  clrHoverText, clrHoverBack, clrHoverBorder - define colors in hover (mouse over) state
  clrDisText, clrDisBack, clrDisBorder - define colors in disabled state

  Please note that currently only buttons support custom colors and custom border
  As for v6.21 Edit fields always use system look
  

• AFL: GuiSetText( "text", id ) - set text of the control
  
• AFL: RequestMouseMoveRefresh() - request formula execution / refresh when mouse is moved INSIDE given chart pane (so it only triggers for ONE window under the cursor)
  This provides less resource consuming way to handle chart graphics that depends on mouse hovering over chart pane than using RequestTimedRefresh as it only triggers one window currently under the cursor and only does not trigger refreshes when mouse does not move

  NOTE2: mouse move refreshes come "as fast as possible". if your code is fast you can get butter smooth animation (even 50fps)

  Example:
  Plot( C, "Price", colorDefault );
GfxCircle( GetCursorXPosition(1), GetCursorYPosition(1), 7 );
RequestMouseMoveRefresh();
  
• If Quote.exe is missing and AmiBroker can't do auto-update of quotes, a detailed information is displayed of where it expects Quote.exe file to be present
• Plugin loading changed: first AmiBroker attempts to load plugins for "Plugins" subfolder from where Broker.EXE file is located (new behavior) and if subfolder is NOT found, it then defaults to old behavior (using "Plugins" subfolder under current working

If you experience any problem with this beta version please send detailed description of the problem (especially the steps needed to reproduce it) to support at amibroker.com