by rlaggren » Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:37 am
Mark
That all is clear, makes perfect sense what's going on. Thanks for your quick response. I guess I'm just a simple one celled investor at this point and FM only needs the one icon for my list items...
I stand by my request(s), though:
You mention using Names, ratherl than symbols in the list (and by extension, I assume other reports). Identifying by symbol seems far more efficient to me. When cross referencing with other sources, the symbol seems better to quickly and surely identify unique securities. Not perfect, but noticeably better than the name. Here's some reasons why:
- Names (or how they are displayed in different articles, reports, forms, lists, databases, etc), seem to vary somewhat. Names, for the same security, found in different documents don't seem to always start _exactly_ the same - so sorting becomes variable across different sources.
- For the same list, Names and their corresponding Symbols do not sort out the same. Thus if I'm looking at another reference sorted by symbol, it can become an easter egg hunt when referencing it back to the name in FM's list. I guess I could use the Name _and_ Symbol fields in the list display, but column width is a finite resource and, hiding right most columns off screen hurts usability noticeably. This matters particularly with laptops. I'm not talking about phones here - IMHO that form factor should _not_ be connected to securities work...
- Most important: Names, different names, seem at times to be similar or identical in the first 10-15 characters while still referencing different securities. Some funds and bonds have caused me problems trying to acertain, for sure but quickly, which security's info I'm actually looking at. Part of this problem relates directly to the size of the display field, but that doesn't offer any solution; most cases, I cannot grow the display field size sufficiently to make a usable difference. Scrolling the field is just a time consuming pain and, more importantly, if the displayed field is "live" and I put a cursor into it to get a scroll, I get the opportunity to mess up my data by entering a typo. Believe me, it's not hard to do this when doing a lot of screen work - and, worse, without knowing it. Symbols, even when it's five characters and differing only in the last one, seem much better to work with in this regard. Quicker, less error prone.
Onward. I'm darn happy about the coincidence that the subfolio sorted to the top because of a blank symbol! Forcing subs to the top seems like something that would be a seriously good idea and is the default in the several file managers I've worked with. It really, really helps clarifying the contents of the display. From what you say, the "list" uses the same display logic to handle all its input lines. But perhaps it would be possible to:
- add a(nother?) hidden marker field to all list lines and use that to force subs to the top (or bottom, optionally); the sort method would do this "automatically" once the added field was set up and defined as the first level sort field.
- optionally move part of the name field into the symbol of a subs list line. I would expect rather mixed results here, but if the option is available, users might find it easy to name their subfolios in a manner which would work here and it might turn out well.
-OR, way better (but this would require changing the list logic to use different line formats for different types of lines) displaying the name field automatically for all/any subs that appear in the list. Since a sub place holder does not need any of the regular column data, there's plenty of room.
- maybe (this doesn't matter to me personally) offer the option to hide the subs from the list entirely; they would appear only in the navigation panel to the left. Or maybe this can be achieved now with sub properties; sorry, I haven't looked at this. IAC, might not be a great idea, since, per above, all file managers default to showing directories at the top of file lists. People are familiar and used to this and probably look there habitually to find subs. However, an argument might be make that it's clearer/easier to work with a list which displays only one type of line item...
Maybe a better approach to this would be an additional subwindow, at top or bottom, which would contain all subs -just like the small window at the bottom which contains the totals. This would allow logically and visually separating different types of list items. For me, this type of formatting helps usage noticeably. Cat's Meoww.
Well, thank you for considering any of the above. I hope some of it may be interesting or helpful.
Regards,
Rufus