Top level account without any type (or file links)

[Stuart McGraw]

On 05/16/2012 09:35 AM, Colin Scott wrote:
> 
>> In fact, what you really want is:
>> 
>> A separate set of books for each partnership.
> 
> The real downside of this is that (unless something has changed
> recently) it isn't possible to keep more than one set of books open
> at the same time.  If you are the book-keeper for multiple sets of
> accounts, moving from one set of books to the next is slow and
> horribly clunky.

I manage three separate sets of books and it is quite possible 
to have any or all of them open at the same time.

Simply specify the set of books you want to open as an argument
to the gnucash command.

For convenience I set up some desktop shortcuts, each having
a command like, "gnucash personal.gnc", another with
"gnucash association.gnc", etc.  This works equally well on
both Windows and Linux, and no doubt there is a way to do
something similar on Macs.  I open whatever set of books I
want by clicking the appropriate icon, which works fine 
regardless of what other books happen to be open.

>[...]
> In any case, it seems to me that this whole question, the way it
> keeps recurring, and the way it is always answered, is quite a good
> example of the way that gnucash developers often see things from
> their own perhaps slightly blinkered viewpoint (which is fine, so far
> as it goes!) but fail to see that many gnucash users have different
> and conflicting, but nontheless valid, viewpoints.

We all see things with a blinkered viewpoint and I think 
the gnucash developers are no worse in that regard than 
you or I.  Perhaps better because their blinkers are less
likely due to ignorance about how to use gnucash.

I also don't believe for a second your hyperbole that gnucash
developers "fail to see that many gnucash users have different
and conflicting, but nontheless valid, viewpoints".  There is
a difference between "failing to see" and "seeing but choosing
to work on something else".