What's new in the latest version?

What's new in the latest version?

Highlights of version 6.30

Version 6.30 brings lots of new functionality especially with regards to the formula language and performance . There are hundreds of new features and changes to existing functionality as compared to version 6.20, listed in detail in "Release Notes" document in AmiBroker directory. Below is just a short list of few of them:

• HIGHLIGHT: User-definable on-chart GUI controls

18 new AFL functions were added to allow creation of user-definable on-chart graphical user interfaces.



• GuiButton - create on-chart button control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiCheckBox - creates on-chart checkbox control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiDateTime - creates on-chart date-time picker control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiEdit - create on-chart edit control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiEnable - enables or disables on-chart control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiGetCheck - get checked state of control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiGetEvent - get GUI event (AFL 4.30)
• GuiGetText - get text from on-chart control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiGetValue - get numeric value of on-chart control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiRadio - creates on-chart radio button control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiSetCheck - set checked state of on-chart control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiSetFont - set the font for on-chart control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiSetRange - set slider control range (AFL 4.30)
• GuiSetText - set text value of on-chart control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiSetValue - set numeric value of on-chart control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiSetVisible - shows or hides on-chart control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiSlider - creates on-chart slider control (AFL 4.30)
• GuiToggle - create on-chart toggle button control (AFL 4.30)

• New features in AmiBroker Formula Language

• static variable declaration
• passing variables by reference
• new voice functions
  
  • VoiceSetRate - sets voice speech rate (AFL 4.30)
  • VoiceSetVolume - set the volume of speech (AFL 4.30)
  • VoiceWaitUntilDone - waits until TTS voice has finished speaking (AFL 4.30)
• system error handling via GetLastOSError
• support for geometric pens in GfxSelectPen
  
• Huge performance improvements in 64-bit version with migration to new VC++2017 compiler
  
  Why do we migrate to new compiler with 64-bit version?
  • New compiler supports new CPU instructions (SSE3/AVX) that we can use to offer better performance
  • According to our tests new compiler support produces faster code by itself (better optimizations, auto-vectorization, etc)
  • New compiler is better with error checking (less bugs to slip through)
  • 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?

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

• Other key improvements
  
  • Auto-optimization framework
  • HTML5 compatibility in Web Research window
  • comment folding in the AFL editor
  • clickable links in Analysis result list