Four coins per screen

The ticker splits its coin area into four equal rows, one coin per row, filled from the top in the order of your list. The glass is 240 by 240 pixels and the coin area is 236 pixels tall, so each row is 59 pixels. A row holds two things: at the left edge, the coin's symbol or its icon; at the right edge, its price, right-aligned. Both are centered on the row's middle, with at least 8 pixels between them. There is nothing else on a four-coin screen: no title line, no figures, no chart.

The ticker groups your coins four at a time in the order of your list: coins 1 to 4 on the first screen, 5 to 8 on the second, 9 to 12 on the third. The groups are fixed, so a coin always shares its screen with the same neighbors while your list stays the same, and with the twelve boxes of the settings page full, the rotation is three screens long. After the last screen it starts again at the first.

If your count does not divide by four, the last screen shows what is left and leaves the rows below it empty; it is never padded with coins from the top of the list. A paused coin leaves the rotation and the coins after it move up a place, so the groups after it change. With four coins or fewer there is only one screen: each time its time runs out the ticker fetches fresh prices and draws it again, and the arrow buttons under the coin boxes are dimmed. Switching Per screen: to Four, or saving your list with Save & Apply Coins, starts again at the first screen.

Four per screen shows only the symbol or the icon because a 59-pixel row has room for one name tag beside its price, and the price comes first. A name, or any pair such as the symbol with the name, would take width the price needs, so the Title Area offers two choices in this layout, Symbol and Icon, where One and Two per screen offer five. The factory choice is Symbol.

The ticker holds to the same rule whatever a saved setting says: a four-coin title that includes the icon is drawn as the icon, and any other is drawn as the symbol. The choice is kept separately from One and Two per screen, and a change shows at once, redrawn from the prices already on the screen.

The ticker books a readable size for the symbol before it sizes the price: about 55% of the row's usable height, which on this screen is type 31 pixels tall. The price then gets the width that is left. If a long symbol at that size would leave the price no room even in its smallest type, the symbol gives back one size at a time, on that row only, until the price fits.

Once the prices are settled, each symbol may grow into any spare width, up to the height of its own price and at most the largest title type, 36 pixels tall, but never below the size it booked. Last, the symbols are evened out down the column so that none is more than one size larger than the smallest, which can take a symbol one size under its booking, never more. Symbols are drawn in capital letters, in the colorset's title color. The symbol is booked first for legibility: fitting the price first and giving the symbol whatever width was left would shrink the labels until they could only be read from close up.

The Icon choice shows the coin's logo, 47 pixels square, at the left edge of its row and centered on it. A logo is fixed artwork with nothing to negotiate, so beside it the price always gets the same 185 pixels of width. A coin whose logo is not on the ticker yet, such as a new listing, shows its symbol in that row instead. New logos reach the ticker by themselves with its automatic updates; see a coin shows no icon.

The ticker's fonts carry plain letters, digits and ordinary punctuation. A coin whose name and symbol have nothing drawable in them shows its logo even with Symbol selected, and if the logo is missing too, a plain-letter form of the coin's identifier in capitals. In the Amber and Green colorsets the logos are drawn in the set's single color, to match the rest of the screen.

Four per screen has no figures and no chart because a 59-pixel row holds a name tag and a price and nothing more. The 24h%, volume, market cap and rank need a row of their own under each price, and a chart needs a band of its own, so this layout has neither, and the settings page removes the Price Area and Chart Area sections while Per screen is on Four. A screen of four fetches only the latest figures for its four coins, together, and no price history.

What you give up is the size of each move: the direction still shows in the color of each price, as the up and down section below explains. For the 24h% and the other figures under each price, switch Per screen to Two; for a chart, to One.

Four per screen has two settings of its own: the Title Area, whose heading reads "for Four per screen" while this layout is selected, and the time each screen stays, Show Four for:. Everything inside the Global Settings border, such as Market Info, the address card, brightness and the colorset, applies here as in every layout, and the coin list is shared by all three. The figure switches, the V/M prefix, the figure colors and the chart choices stay stored for the other layouts and have no effect on a four-coin screen.

Two different coins can share a symbol, and in rows titled by Symbol they would look identical. The settings page warns under the Title Area, naming the symbol: "is shared by two of your coins, with Symbol only they'll look identical. Add Icon to tell them apart." In Four per screen that means choosing Icon, which tells them apart by their logos. The same coin entered twice is allowed and comes around twice as often; if both entries fall in the same group of four, it fills two rows of one screen. More in coins that share a symbol.

In Four per screen, each price takes the largest type that fits two limits: the height of its row, and the width left beside the symbol or icon. A row is 59 pixels tall, 57 of them usable, which is room for the ticker's largest price size, 45 pixels tall, so on a four-coin screen width is what usually decides. Beside an icon the price has 185 pixels; beside a symbol it has whatever the symbol's booked size leaves, less an 8-pixel gap. The price type comes in a ladder of sizes, largest first, and the two largest sizes also come in a narrower cut, which a price tries before it drops a size.

A four-coin price can therefore be as tall as the price in One per screen, and taller than a price in Two per screen with its figures on, which is held to 41 pixels to leave room for them. Long prices beside long symbols come out smaller.

The four prices come out close in size because the ticker allows no more than one size step between the smallest and the largest in the column. Each row first finds the largest size that fits it, because a long price really does need smaller type than a short one. Then the column is evened out: the smallest size any row needed sets the pace, and every price larger than one step above it is brought down to that step. The rule only ever moves a price down, so no price is asked to fit a size it does not fit. The reason is the look of the column: without it, a tiny price in small type beside a big one would make one column read like two different screens.

The ticker plans the whole screen before it draws anything: first it sizes every row, then it evens out the prices, and only then does it size the symbols against the prices it settled on, so a price that came down a step hands its width back to the symbol beside it.

Four per screen leaves out the dollar sign because every price on the ticker is in US dollars: on a screen of four rows the "$" would say the same thing four times, and it takes as much width as a digit, twice that of a comma or a point. Leaving it off gives that width to the price, worth about one size step. One and Two per screen have the room and keep their "$".

In Four per screen the leading zero of a price under a dollar is always dropped, so 0.3263 shows as .3263. It is dropped on every screen and every row, not only when losing it would buy a bigger size: a rule that applied only sometimes would let the same column keep its zeros on one screen and lose them on the next, decided by a coin you were not looking at, while a rule that always applies is one you stop noticing. Prices of a dollar or more have no leading zero and are unaffected.

A price below $0.0001 is shortened: instead of a run of zeros it shows ".0", then a small number counting the zeros after the decimal point, then up to four significant digits. It is the same form the other layouts use, without the dollar sign and the leading zero. In a four-coin row the count is drawn at about 60% of the height of the digits, so it scales with whatever size the row's price lands on. How the ticker rounds and shortens prices in general is on the One per screen page and in accuracy, rounding and tiny prices.

The ticker fetches the latest figures for all four coins together as a screen comes up, and draws the screen from them; nothing on it is fetched again while it stays up. The next screen brings its own fetch, and with only one screen of coins the same screen is fetched and drawn again each time its time runs out. How often the figures themselves change is covered in how often prices refresh.

Each screen stays for the time on the Show Four for: slider under the coin boxes: 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 seconds, 10 seconds from the factory. Two and Four per screen keep separate times, as does One per screen. The slider applies as you move it, and the new time counts from when the screen on the glass appeared, so shortening it can bring the next screen at once. Every new screen means a fetch, which is why 10 seconds is the floor, and since a screen's prices are not refreshed while it stays up, 30 seconds is the longest the ticker leaves one standing. The fetch for the next screen starts a little under half a second before the time runs out, so the time you set is about the time the screen is on the glass.

The arrow buttons under the coin boxes step a whole screen of four back or forward, and the pause button between them holds the current screen for up to 30 seconds, after which it finishes the time it had left. Tapping the small symbol inside a coin's box brings up the screen that holds that coin.

A coin whose price has not arrived keeps its row: its symbol or icon shows at the left and a dim “-.--” stands where the price goes, sized like the prices beside it, while the other rows show their prices. The screen still gets its full time, and the coin is fetched again the next time its screen comes around.

When a card from Show Market Info is due, it takes a turn of its own between two screens, and the rotation then carries on with the screen that was next, so no group of four loses its turn. After the round of cards at power-on, cards keep at least 30 seconds from each other and from the address card; see Market Info. The address card from Show my IP address appears as a fresh screen comes up, as a box in the middle of the screen over the middle rows or as a QR code over the whole screen, and when it has had its time the rotation moves on to the next screen; see the address card.