Utility request - ability to "merge" workspaces?

[carbuff]

I have a situation which I expect others here may run into as well, given the fact that I believe a few of us come from the same background... I'm curious if anyone could offer up a possible solution, or if the folks at ESignal might consider creating a feature or utility to manage this... (standalone utility would be fine for me).

I run QCharts from 3 different PC's, one at home, one at work, and a laptop for when I travel. I use a very similar workspace on all three of these machines, similar meaning that I have the same basic set of charts visible within the workspace. (5 or 6 different timeframes for a single symbol). Each machine though has a different display resolution / configuration, and thus the layouts of the workspaces are all different.

I do a lot of research at home, finding new symbols to add to my workspace, and drawing lines on my charts. The problem is, I have no easy way to migrate that work to my other 2 platforms. Simply copying the workspace to each PC isn't efficient, since the layouts are so different. But the work I do on my primary workspace would be very helpful on my other platforms as well.

What I would like is some kind of utility that would allow me to 'merge' various features / information from one workspace (set of charts) to my other workspace (set of charts). I would like to do that in a selective manner. By that I mean, this utility would load up both workspace files, and it would give me the option of what items/features/etc (whatever the correct QCharts term is for items like Rays, Extended Lines, Text boxes) to merge from Workspace A to Workspace B. This wouldn't be a per-item merge, it would be "merge all lines that exist on a Daily chart in workspace A to a Daily chart in workspace B" level of merge. If a line for a symbol already exists in workspace B on the daily chart, nothing happens. But if there is a new line in workspace A on the daily chart that doesn't currently exist on the Daily chart for the same symbol in workspace B, it would be added.

I actually took a look at the workspace .qcw file, and given enough time I could probably experiment and figure out how to create this myself. But I really don't have the time, and I think that others might be interested in a similar tool. So, I wanted to throw this idea out here and see if there might be any chance that QCharts folks who have all the information much more easily at their disposal would consider creating a tool like this for us...

And if there is any feature in QCharts today that I'm not aware of which would help support this, I would love to hear about it.

Thanx for reading, and for the consideration.

[emboehm]

Re: Utility request - ability to "merge" workspaces?

One method of doing what you want is to save the layout of each chart to a file.

However, this has several drawbacks and I don't think it will meet your requirements.

1. You will have a separate file for each symbol and each time frame. This can easily become hundreds of files.

2. You then have to set the layout for all of these files

3. I have experienced what I think is a bug. I have tried to set the layout but the workspace seems to lose the settings. I will set layouts for one symbol, move to the next. When I return to the previous symbol, the layouts I had set are gone or set to something else.

I have the same desire to move settings between installations and would be interested in other solutions, if available.

[JayF]

Thanks guys for the suggestions. It sounds complex to implement, but certainly useful. When we next revisit workspaces, we'll look into this possible enhancement.

[twofish]

Jay,
Please add another user to the RFE request as I have exactly the same work flow. I research at night using 4 screens, then email my .ws and alerts.* to my office laptop and spend 10 minutes each day resizing and vice-versa.
Thanks a bunch,
Greg

[nall]

I have a similar issue as the other posters, though the solution I envisioned was a bit different. I'll share it just as food for thought.

My setup is such that I hook my notebook up to a very large display at night to research, but during the day I can only use the small notebook screen. So the dilemma is that I can either have a workspace layout that is optimized for my notebook (and tiny on the large display) or optimized for the large display (and I have to scroll around on the notebook).

A single workspace could have different "views", where a view refers to the window sizes and layout displayed on the screen. So while in one view, you could add lines/text to the charts and they'd be there when you switch to another view (because it's the same workspace underneath).

For those that use separate platforms, you could just keep your workspace on a USB stick and switch to the view appropriate to your current location.