Proposal for modifying gnucash to use exact quantities

[Richard Wackerbarth]

On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, Terry wrote:

> Richard, you have renewed my faith in the human condition - I observed
> many, many decades ago that there are a lot of people who only want to
> stand on the sidelines and throw brickbats at the participants, then
> whenever anything doesn't work exactly right, they can proclaim to the
> world at large, that ..... SEE they were right all along. They knew it
> wouldn't work and proclaimed so to everybody all along. If only they had
> followed their sage advice .............
>
> Then there are the participants who actually get the work done.

If you think that is actually my position, I ask you to explain why I have 
spent many hours assisting Bill in getting a QIF importer that really works 
reasonably well. I have never been particularly happy with his design, but it 
has improved in time.

As much as he may wish to deny it, Bill convinced me that he was unwilling to 
accept any invasion of his turf. As a result, I have given up on attempting 
to submit any but the most trivial code for inclusion in gnucash.

However, if you examine the record, you will find that I was able to convince 
Bill and others that we needed to use integer rather than floating point 
representations. 

I have failed to get them to recognize many of the nuances that are 
"intutively obvious" to those of us who have been doing this kind of 
programming for scores of years. I have been responsible for the processing 
of loan collections involving hundreds of thousands of loans and tens of 
millions of dollars in annual payments. Over the years, I have seen 
techniques which work and those which fail.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get him to recognize the value of some 
additional planning before he jumped headlong into an implementation which 
addresses some, but not all, of the problems in the present implementation.

If you examine the record, you will also find that I have not "dictated" a 
solution but have requested that additional examination of a proposal be made.
I believe that additional examination of the problem will lead to a 
different, and better, API to address the problem.

I have received private correspondence from others who recognize the 
difficulties of this project which is being controlled by enthustastic, but 
inexperienced, individuals. History indicates that they are likely to 
recreate the mistakes of the past.

I invite anyone who is interested in an effort to DESIGN a better scheme to 
contact me privately. After we have a reasonable design, we can approach the 
implementation.