Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Metastock 6.0 for Window -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Edward R. Haskins who wrote (1153)	11/26/1997 1:58:00 PM
From: Sean W. Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4056

Yes, I've read most of this thread, and several people here believe that Equis has a secret method for putting more than 255 files in a folder. If you folks are still using Windows 3.11 I guess that might be the case, but if you're using Windows 95 or Windows NT then all programs can handle more that 255 files per folder. Just for a quick check if you're using Windows 95, look in your Windows\System folder, and you should have about 700 - 800 files. Or for Windows NT, look in the Winnt\System32 folder and you'll probably see in excess of 1000 files. And a simple little program like NotePad can access any of these files. Could you possibly run a test with the Q+2.0 and see if it is capable of doing this. IF the Q+ people are finally upgrading to 32 bit operation (like most others did in the fall and winter of '95), then it should be OK. Thank you very much . .... Ed Ed, As I said before QP 2.0 or anyother program that potentially competes with metastock deosn't do this and most likely will not. Read on below and I will explain why?? You missed the jist of my comments previously. I understand your logic but your assuming two identical things are the same. you are confusing the number of physical files that exist in a directory versus the number of securities that can exist in a metastock directory. These are independent and have nothing to do with each other. The FAT file system allows more than 255 files to existin any directory except the root and this is true regardless of whether the OS is Dos, Windows 95, Windows 3.11, OS/2, or Windows NT. This has absolutely nothing to do with the metastock limit. Metastock defined a file format that placed a restriction on the number of securities in a directory. Most likely because of some 8 bit index field (2^8=256) which limits the max number of securities that can be stored. This file format was published openly and was widely copied and became very popular. With 6.0 Equis re-engineered there file format to overcome this barrier. They choose not to publish this format but to make a library of code available to read and write this new directory format. The choice for third party vendors is to license the code from equis or reverse engineer the file format. When you start looking at the details of their licensing, the standard lib the advertise is to read MS Downloaders dirs only. You cannot write out "new enhanced MS format". To get this you have to pay more and partner with Equis. IF you read the materials I posted back in this forum, it will become evident that they are selective about who they give this to and don't want to license this technology to potential competitors like quotes plus. Therefore you are not seeing the widespread acceptance of their newer expanded MS file format and no-one has seen it as important enough to reverse engineer the format and use it in their product. If you look over in the QP thread you will see statements from their CEO Gary Lyben stating the same thing in different language. Hope this helps clear up your question. BTW: Have you tried using MSWIN with 2K stocks in a directory??? Its very slow..... All in all the next time you are irritated by this you have Equis to thank, Not Microsoft, TC2000, Quotes Plus, etc. They are choosing not to proliferate there file format as to gain some advantage over their competitors. What I seeing it do is driving people toward using other programs which are less proprietary and don't have the data management headaches associated with the format they choose to use. Overall, even the new format is very poor in terms of space used, # of files creates, and speed when compared to TC2000 or Quotes Plus very robust file formats. Hope this helps, Sean