[MAS-discuss] Workaround for "custom indicators in GUI"-problem

[<pb...@ch...>]

Hi everybody!

You remember my mail from 2004-06-08 concerning my "adding custom indicator to GUI"-problem?

Good news: i found a workaround for this strange problem - looks like there is a little bug in the
Windows-executeable of MAS 1.6.6r.

I did a lot of network-tracing between client and server (both on WinXP) and compared it to the
communication of the Linux-version. So i found the following:

- the GUI-client starts up

- after clicking on 'Indicators' the client seems to request all available indicator names from the
  server

- the server sends the names in one TCP-frame

- each indicator name is delimited by a 0x0A-Byte
  each data-sequence/frame is terminated by a 0x07-Byte
  (see part of network-trace below - SMA20 at the end is my test-indicator)

0x0270   20 54 68 61 6E 20 6F 72-20 45 71 75 61 6C 20 74    Than or Equal t
0x0280   6F 20 7B 4C 69 6D 69 74-7D 0A 53 6C 6F 70 65 20   o {Limit}.Slope 
0x0290   6F 66 20 4D 41 43 44 20-53 69 67 6E 61 6C 20 4C   of MACD Signal L
0x02A0   69 6E 65 20 54 72 65 6E-64 0A 56 6F 6C 75 6D 65   ine Trend.Volume
0x02B0   0A 4D 41 43 44 20 6F 66-20 56 6F 6C 75 6D 65 0A   .MACD of Volume.
0x02C0   4D 69 64 70 6F 69 6E 74-0A 57 4D 41 20 6F 66 20   Midpoint.WMA of 
0x02D0   4D 69 64 70 6F 69 6E 74-0A 55 70 70 65 72 20 42   Midpoint.Upper B
0x02E0   6F 6C 6C 69 6E 67 65 72-20 42 61 6E 64 0A 4C 6F   ollinger Band.Lo
0x02F0   77 65 72 20 42 6F 6C 6C-69 6E 67 65 72 20 42 61   wer Bollinger Ba
0x0300   6E 64 0A 50 61 72 61 62-6F 6C 69 63 20 53 41 52   nd.Parabolic SAR
0x0310   0A 54 79 70 69 63 61 6C-20 50 72 69 63 65 0A 43   .Typical Price.C
0x0320   6F 6D 6D 6F 64 69 74 79-20 43 68 61 6E 6E 65 6C   ommodity Channel
0x0330   20 49 6E 64 65 78 0A 53-4D 41 32 30 0D 07          Index.SMA20..

- ONLY the names of custom indicators are additional delimited by a strange 0x0D-Byte

- the client receives this "unlucky extended" names & compares it with the content of .ma_clientrc

- needless to say, that the names are not matching -> custom indicators are not displayed
  (of course, in .ma_clientrc there are no trailing 0X0D-Bytes!!!)

From my point of the view, the error should be located somewhere around the creation of
new indicators via the command-line client (input of the indicator-name or so).

My humble workaround: if you add the indicator's name to .ma_clientrc, add a trailing 0x0D
(ASCII code 13) to the name. Now the names are matching and your new indicator is correctly
displayed... hope so! :-)

Greetings from Vienna,
Philipp