US Federal bond interest

[Thomas John Vitolo]

When using gnucash, I'd like to include my US bonds (series E and EE) in my
assets.  Of course, I can have

Investments
|-Bonds
  |-Bond_1
  |-Bond_2

etc.  However, I'm not sure how to account for the accrued value of the bond. 
For starters, differet series of bonds have different rules about (1) when they
can be cashed, and (2) penalties for early cashing.

I would like to put in bonds so that, for example, Bond_1 is a Series E (issued
mm1/yy1), and Bond_2 is a Series EE (issued mm2/yy2), and that they each update
their values based on a query to their interest rates, the date issued, and the
current date.  Of course, the added value of the bond should be in the form of
Income:Interest (I would think!).

My current sludged solution is to enter the purchase price of the bond, and then
us a website to calculate it's current value.  Then, I insert Income:Interest
for the difference of the current value and purchase price, so that the total
value of the account is the total value of the bond, and the purchase price and
interest are listed seperately.  Of course, this is a sludge solution, and might
not even be kosher by accounting standards (IANAA).


Can my "idea" be done at all?  How?  If not, how close is this to a feature?  I
might be interested in helping develop this feature, but I admittedly know
little about bonds or Finance::Quote.


Thank you for the advice,

Thomas John Vitolo
Ph D Systems Engineering Candidate,
Boston University