[Fwd: {gnuCash} feature suggestion]

[dingman@cs.earlham.edu]

On Tuesday 20 March 2001 15:23, you wrote:
>Discussions and replies to suggestions like yours belong on the list.
>Your needs may seem off-the-wall to you, but it is that assemblage of
>suggestions that helps make gnuCash such a great package.  It is just
>this feedback, the blue-sky suggestions, and subsequent thrashing
> around that most closed corporate programmers are not allowed to
> access.
=09OK, I'm here. I didn't initially think it would be worth joining,=20
since I've already got all my programming time comitted to another=20
project, for a grade. It'll be released under the GPL as soon as either=20
(a) there is enough there to be worth someone else's time or (b) I=20
graduate and therefore no longer have any reason not to let other=20
people help me over the hard bits because the project isn't a class=20
anymore.  However, if you think my comments here can be useful without=20
code, here I am.

>Your idea appeals to me, though I fear packages that grow into worlds
> of their own.  I favor modularity and inter-modular communication.=20
> It probably comes from long use of Amiga systems, where even the
> "file requestor" tool can be a module of one's own choice, and each
> major package can use its own or my favorite as I like.
=09I, too, find modularity to be a good thing. Without knowing much about=
=20
the software architecture, the only thing I would expect to put into=20
Gnucash to implement this feature is a hook to pull in xscanimage from=20
the SANE package, the same way the GIMP does. It does occurr to me that=20
it would be convenient to have the images actually stored in the=20
gnucash data files simply because I would want to keep them encrypted=20
and I already have a ritual for encrypting and decrypting my gnucash=20
files around sessions. However, those files could easily get too big=20
and handling them is, as others have pointed out, not necessarily=20
something Gnucash should bother itself with. The solution to my=20
encryption desires is a transparent cryptographic filesystem, not=20
bloating Gnucash. I don't like the ones that exist right now, but I'm=20
working on that problem :)

>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: feature suggestion
>Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 20:19:17 -0500
>From: Andrew C.Dingman <dingman@cs.earlham.edu>
>Reply-To: dingman@cs.earlham.edu
>To: gnucash-devel@lists.gnumatic.com
>
>Hi, all-
>=09I know you're all busy with lots of things that may be more
> important, but one feature I'd really love to see in the next release
> of Gnucash would be the ability to attach scanned images of my
> receipts to gnucash transactions. Directly acquiring the image from
> within Gnucash through a call to xscanimage or such would be very
> convenient. This is probably a feature that home users would be more
> interested in than businesses, at a guess, but hey, that's what I am.
> =09When I kept paper records instead of using Gnucash, I tried to
> staple my receipts to the apropriate statements when they arrived. It
> seems like bad record keeping to throw away my only proof that I
> actually made the purchases, but like many people my ability to keep
> track of little bits of paper is so limitted that I might as well be
> throwing them away right now.
>=09I'm not subscribed to this list, so if you have responses you want me
>to read, you'll need to cc me or wait for me to get around to reading
>the list archive.
>
>TIA, even if you just shrug and ignore me ;)
>
>-Andrew Dingman
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