What's New in StockXloader

The Release Notes included with the StockXloader package may contain a more detailed list of changes. The following is a summary:

Version 3.4.6, relative to 3.4.5:

This a maintenance and "polishing" release, 2010-02-17.

• Changed behavior: When downloading YahooCurrent, it will now NOT set the Last Date for YahooHistorical! This change is done so as to minimize the risk of missing data. It is therefore recommended to set ProTA so that new data overwrites data for existing dates.
• The feature Translate Yahoo tickers is now set to Off by default. If you have had it On, however, it will remain On. In addition, its function is now slightly changed, see the release notes.
• New feature: A new shortcut (cmd-9) in the Tools menu for opening Yahoo Ticker Symbol Lookup.
• Made text messages in the Message Log substantially clearer and more "streamlined", taking away unnecessary things while providing specific info for specific cases, making them easier to understand and they occupy less space.
• Fixed a problem with the date steppers in Snow Leopard (they often stepped 2 units on each click).
• Fixed minor GUI bugs in the table. (Certain clickings could cause error messages.)
• Much more extensive procedures in troubleshooting (see the Help menu).
• Fixed the bug where the Yahoo FAQ would not open from the Tools menu.

Version 3.4.5, relative to 3.4.4:

• Fixes a problem in Tiger that prevented downloads if this was the first time StockXloader was used. (The problem was caused by a change in 3.4.4, which worked flawlessly on Leopard, but an old bug in the Tiger OS caused problems there.)
• New feature: A new menu item and shortcut in the Tools menu that does the same as clicking the Download button.

Version 3.4.4, relative to 3.4.3:

• Fixes a performance problem that could result in timeout. (In 3.4.3, a command that Apple deems deprecated was replaced by a new one, but the new command caused problems. It is now fixed by using yet another method, which is very fast.)

Version 3.4.3, relative to 3.4.2:

• Adapts to a small change at Yahoo which caused an extra linefeed on import (for current day quotes).

Version 3.4.2, relative to 3.4.1:

• Now parses the ticker lists much more strictly, which avoids errors as a result of a bad ticker list. Lines that do not comply with the syntax rules are now simply ignored.
• Takes stronger measures against some system errors related to memory issues. This should finally kill the infamous (but rare) '-116' error. If a persistent problem is still detected, it restarts the downloads after a period of rest.
• Fixed a bug where the system would download the historical data twice.
• Somewhat faster.
• The deletion of old files in 'Temporary quote files' is no longer limited to 1370 items.

Version 3.4.1, relative to 3.4:

• Fixed a Unicode issue on Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), where the first few lines in the file to import to ProTA was written as UTF16, which ProTA didn't like, whereas Leopard wrote them normally as it should, namely as single-byte "standard characters".
• Updated the User Guide.

Version 3.4, relative to 3.3.4:

• Compatibility with Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard).
• Universal binary, which means it has "native code" for both PowerPC and Intel based computers. In addition, this also means that compatibility with Panther and Jaguar is dropped. Thus: version 3.4 requires Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) or later!
• A more general licensing, where new license keys can now be generated based on the user's full name (with arbitrary Unicode characters) as an alternative to the so called "Short Name" (which is the same as the name of your home folder).
• A very rare error (code -116) is now hopefully stopped. That error could never be reproduced or consistently repeated, and on second run the problem was gone. StockXloader now automatically makes a second attempt if that error occurs.
• The steppers to reorder sources or change the download date are now always visible, but grayed out, plus a text instructing you to select a row before the date can be changed. This was done because some users did not realize the procedure without some help.
• A number of other minor issues.

Earlier versions:

Version 3.3.4, relative to 3.3.3:

• Bug fix: When there are more than 200 tickers, and you did a download of YahooCurrent (i.e for the current day), the full security name and security type got wrong for tickers above 200. That is now fixed. (This bug crept up as a result of a feature enhancement in version 3.1.5; it only occurred when you explicitly specified the full security name and security type.)

Version 3.3.3, relative to 3.3.1:

• StockXloader choked for quotes in the US ticker list when requesting more than about 16 years of data. That is now solved by a more efficient method by which it can take arbitrarily much data.
• Yahoo seems to no longer enforce a 200-day limit per batch for non-US quotes. Yahoo has been ambiguous as to what the rules are, but StockXloader 3.3.3 no longer divides data into periods of at most 200 trading days for non-US quote lists. ALL four lists are now treated the same: they download data for each ticker in one single chunk regardless of time span.
• Minor change of a progress bar.

Version 3.3.1, relative to 3.3:

• Due to a change at Yahoo, they sometimes use an ISO date instead of a spreadsheet date for historical Yahoo data! It seems to depend on which server machine currently is delivering data, rather than what ticker it is. StockXloader now accepts either format.
• Minor correction when dragging quote files onto the Download button: If they contain html code that displays "Sorry, the page you requested was not found" instead of data with actual quotes, they are now correctly interpreted as empty rather than being reported as erroneous data.
• The full security name (as written in a ticker list) may now be up to 49 characters, since that is the limit in the new ProTA 3.0 for OS X. (The name may contain non-ascii characters, such as 'åäö, ü, é, è, ç'.)

Version 3.3, relative to 3.2:

• Worked around a bug in Mac OS X 10.4 on Intel Macs, which writes type codes backwards!
  (A bug unknown to Apple before I reported it.
• Exploited the new pragmas in the OS X version of ProTA, so that column settings, delimiter and dates are automatically set right upon import of the quotes. (Requires ProTA version 3.0b50 or later to work smoothly.) Read more about the settings in Chapter 6 in the StockXloader User Guide.
• Made the buttons for Reorder, Revert, Save Changes, Change Date somewhat larger, upon user request.
• StockXloader still works with Classic ProTA, but most references to Classic ProTA in the User Guide has been taken away, and the script to install preference files for Classic ProTA has been taken away. The assumption is that new users of StockXloader will probably use the OS X version of ProTA, even though it is only a beta (3.0b50 as of this writing), whereas existing customers may want StockXloader to work with both versions of ProTA.

Version 3.2, relative to 3.1.8:

• Changed the syntax of the ticker lists slightly: There must now be a space or tab before the '=' character that separates the ticker from the "full security name". It was made to enable the following feature:
• New feature: it is now possible to have tickers for currencies and commodities! These tickers contain the '=' character.
• New feature: StockXloader now has 4 Yahoo ticker lists: In addition to the previous (EU), (US) and (A) lists, there is now also a list for "region" (X), which can be used as a temporary extra list for getting quotes for some individual ticker you may be interested in.
• The whole functionality for getting quotes from Affärsvärlden has been taken away — the reason is that they no longer offer free quotes. StockXloader is now purely a Yahoo downloader.
• Took away the so called Columns Codes, which only were relevant to Classic ProTA, and only when creating new ticker files. If you really need them, use StockXloader 3.2.

Version 3.1.8:

• Worked around an "exotic" bug in Jaguar that, under special rare circumstances, prevented StockXloader to start up for some users.
• The default interval in the automatic check for updates is now set to check daily. (You can still choose weekly if you want, or turn it off).

Version 3.1.7

• Fixed two small bugs that crept into version 3.1.5 of StockXloader — it will no longer report an error if YahooCurrent (i.e current day quotes) is downloaded on a weekend, or if the ticker list is empty.

Version 3.1.6

• Changes in versions 3.0.5 to 3.1.5 of StockXloader actually broke compatibility with Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2.x). Version 3.1.6 of StockXloader brings functionality back to Mac OS 10.2.3 through 10.2.8.
• The installation disk for versions 3.1 and 3.1.5 of StockXloader has a utility 'Install Pref files' that will not run on Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2.x). The current build of the installation disk includes a version of the utility adapted to Jaguar — it is in a folder named 'Install Pref files Jaguar'.

Version 3.1.5

• Fixed compatibility issues with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
• You can now specify security type in the ticker lists, by prefixing the ticker (symbol) with a single character followed by a colon. This means that StockXloader now supports any security type that ProTA recognizes, such as options and futures. The character shall be one of the supported Type Codes in ProTA's Universal Text Importer, i.e: S, M, I, F, O, B, G.
  If you do not specify a security type, StockXloader will, just as before, automatically categorize tickers into stocks, indexes and mutual funds if they abide by the standard syntax used by most tickers at Yahoo. By specifying a security type, however, you can override the automatic categorization, and it is now the preferred method.
• Delivering the 'full security name' to ProTA is now supported also for YahooCurrent and not just for YahooHistorical. So, in the Yahoo ticker files, you can enter both a 'full security name' of your choice and its 'security type' — StockXloader will now, for both YahooHistorical and YahooCurrent, insert those information fields into the relevant columns in the file to import into ProTA. The effect is that when ProTA shall create new symbols, it will automatically get the full security names and place the securities into the right categories. Thus, you automatically get the proper names into the database without having to enter each name in a dialog, and it works also for futures, options and bonds!
• Affärsvärlden completely changed their site 2005-05-20. StockXloader has therefore been adapted so it works like before.
• The number of tickers from Affärsvärlden has grown steadily, and many short-lived items (lasting only a few months) have recently been included. These may for instance be convertibles, derivatives or subscription right certificates. In order for you to be spared from having to create new tickers for these items and "cluttering" your database, StockXloader now skips tickers that have a space followed by any of [BT or TO or TR or KV or a string that contains a number].
• Minor improvements/enhancements and bug fixes.

Version 3.1.0

• StockXloader now has three Yahoo ticker lists: In addition to the previous (EU) and (US) lists, there is now also a list for "region" (A), which works just like the (EU) list, but the letter (A) can be thought of as representing, or matching other regions or keywords such as: Asia, Australia, Americas, Alternate, Additional, ...
• In the Yahoo ticker lists, you can enter a 'full security name' of your choice — for YahooHistorical, StockXloader will now pick that name and insert it into a column of the file to import into ProTA; the effect is that when ProTA shall create new symbols, it will automatically get the full security names. This way, you automatically get the proper names into the database without having to enter each name in a dialog! This will make it MUCH easier to get going with StockXloader + ProTA!
• En new help file: 'Yahoo Ticker-list Guide' is now available in the Tools menu. It describes the rules and has a number of example tickers for different regions of the world.
• StockXloader will now convert all dates in the downloaded files into the form '5-Oct-2004'. This way, ProTA can be set to any date format, so there is no longer any need to use the US date format when importing Affärsvärlden or YahooCurrent! (As before, since tab is the field separator, the decimal separator you choose in ProTA may be either a period or a comma.)
• An additional Preferences installer is provided on the installation disk: it can install an adapted preferences file for ProTA that includes quote import format settings for making a robust identification of columns completely automatic. For first-time users of StockXloader, this makes it MUCH easier to get started, since it eliminates the need to manually set all these things! Read more about this in the User Guide, Chapter 5.
• If the Notes file or any of the Yahoo ticker files are deleted or renamed, StockXloader will now recreate new fresh templates as soon as you choose that item in the Tools menu, or restart StockXloader.
• Updated User Guide with many more clarifications.

Versions 3.0.1 — 3.0.5

• A new feature where StockXloader now warns you about downloaded historical Yahoo tickers that do not have as recent quotes as the most recent ticker has — that protects you from being mislead, so that you can choose to set the date back and download again at a later time when the Yahoo databases have been updated.
• A new item in the Tools menu directly opens the folder of the StockXloader files.
• Three keyboard shortcuts to items in the Tools menu.
• Changes to the message log text to increase clarity and reduce risk of misinterpretations.
• Changes to the error handling so as to better cope with certain error situations that earlier could lead to stopped download, an unclosed file, and in rare cases even a crash. These changes will also result in better error reports. Also, some rare harmless errors signaled by the operating system were earlier interpreted as serious errors, which stopped the download, but they are now just reported as harmless warnings.
• Smoother and more swift progress display of the progress bar and its text field.
• StockXloader now correctly checks only once a week for new versions.
• Fixed a problem where the first Yahoo ticker would be ignored if data for Affärsvärlden was also downloaded in the same batch just prior to the Yahoo data.
• 3.0.3 can automatically categorize tickers as mutual funds.
• In the Message Log, 3.0.3 now highlights certain warnings in red.
• Fixed a potential problem that could stop the downloading process.
• Made it to remember the chosen size of the Message Log drawer.
• Automatically checks for new versions. Fixed a problem in Jaguar that prevented proper operation when downloading historical Yahoo quotes.

The Release Notes in StockXloader contains more details.