New specification for Canadian cheques

[David Hampton]

On Mon, 2007-02-26 at 16:50 -0500, Gilles Gariepy wrote:
> 
> Effective June 30th, 2007, all Canadian cheques must conform to new,
> standardised specifications as outlined at
> http://www.cdnpay.ca/news/new_cheque_specs.asp . Most of the changes can be
> accommodated with the custom setting in gnucash. However, there is one
> specification that I have not figured out how to comply with.
> 
> It states that ³Field indicators must be printed below the date on all
> cheques in 6-8pt font in one of three
> available formats: YYYYMMDD, DDMMYYYY or MMDDYYYY.²
> 
> Does anyone have any ideas if this can be achieved ³locally² or does this
> require changes to gnucash?

Well, this is good timing.  I'm starting to work over the check printing
code to a) use the newer printing infrastructure, and b) make it easier
for users to create their own check formats.

My thought was to have the check layout specified in an xml file, and
have a directory that gnucash scanned to learn all the check formats.
Adding a new check format would be as simple as dropping a new xml file
into this directory.  I was planning to add support for arbitrary
graphics (logo, signature, etc) to be printed on checks.  There's no
reason I can't extend this to arbitrary fixed text.  The quick solution
to your problem would then be to just add a new text field to the check
layout containing "YYYYMMDD" and specify the right offset so that its
printed below the date line.  

Given that this new law affects all Canadian users, I'll probably end up
extending gnucash to automatically add the format information for any
date field that only uses numbers.

David