Glossary
The terms this manual uses, in the sense it uses them. Where a term has a page of its own, the entry points at it.
bar
One step of the chart’s interval. Your script is evaluated once per bar, in
order, and each bar carries an open, a high, a low, a close and a
volume as float series, along with its own bar_index. A bar’s time is the
instant it opened; time_close is that instant advanced by one interval.
See Price and volume and Bar-by-bar evaluation.
confirmed
Lipi uses the word in one name, barstate.islastconfirmedhistory, which is true
on the last confirmed historical bar. To separate a bar that is still updating
from one that has closed, read barstate.isrealtime; there is no isconfirmed
flag. This edition does not state whether a bar that has closed is ever
evaluated again.
See Recalculation and confirmation.
delta
A per-bar orderflow figure. orderflow.delta gives a bar’s delta as at its
close, orderflow.maxdelta and orderflow.mindelta give the highest and the
lowest the same bar reached while forming, and orderflow.cvd() accumulates
delta across bars, restarting from zero on the first bar of each session. This
edition does not state how delta itself is computed from a bar’s buying and
selling.
See Orderflow: buying, selling and delta.
footprint
The per-bar record of buying and selling that every orderflow value is read
from. A bar carrying no footprint data reads na in every orderflow variable
rather than zero, so a script can test for the data instead of assuming it.
Which instruments carry it is settled by data licensing and is not stated here.
See Data availability by market.
form type
The second label every value carries: the data type says what a value holds, the
form type says how often it can change. They are literal, const, input,
simple and series, ordered narrowest to widest, and there are no others: a
value is accepted where a wider form is expected and refused where a narrower
one is. You write one only on a function parameter; the manual also calls these
qualifiers.
namespace
A prefix that a group of related names shares, such as orderflow, session,
input and str. You write the namespace, a dot, and the name, as in
session.isfirst. Ask a namespace for a member it does not have and the script
is rejected with an error naming both.
See Errors.
overlay
Drawn over the price bars rather than on a scale of the script’s own. The
indicator declaration takes an overlay argument that sets this for the whole
script, and most chart-output functions take a force_overlay argument that
sets it for a single output; barcolor, fill and hline do not carry one.
The two are separate switches.
See How to plot a value on its own scale.
pane
The area of the chart a script draws in. A script declared with overlay true
draws in the price bars’ own pane; one declared without it gets a pane of its
own, with its own scale. location.top and location.bottom place a marker at
the pane’s top and bottom edges.
See Plotting.
repainting
A word you will meet in trading communities for a drawn result that changes after it was first drawn. This manual does not use it: this edition does not document Lipi’s recalculation contract, so it cannot say when, or whether, a drawn result moves. Where a result must not move, base it on a bar that has closed.
See How to avoid a result that changes after the bar closes.
series
The widest form type: a value that may differ on every bar. The bar’s own values
are series, and you read an earlier one by putting an index in square brackets
after the name, within the lookback limit. The word is also the name of plot’s
first parameter, which is the run of numbers it draws, one point per bar.
See const, simple and series, Referencing past bars and Limits.
session
The grouping of bars that the session values report on. session.date holds the
session’s date and session.isfirst is true on its first bar; both are series,
so each answers for the bar under evaluation. Where a session begins and ends
for a given instrument is not stated in this edition.
top level
The outermost level of a script: statements that sit inside no block. Every
chart-output function must be called there, and a call placed inside a branch,
inside a loop or inside a function of your own is rejected with an error saying
it must be made in the global scope. alert is the exception and may be called
inside a condition.
See Plotting.