gnucash ideas - (fwd)

[Christopher Browne]

On Mon, 31 Jul 2000 18:01:32 PDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
<jholland@gears.linuxave.net>  said:
> Hello - I just discovered gnucash which seems pretty cool!
> I'd like to offer any help I can to the effort but my knowledge of
> programming is more in the applications language level - like Python,
> Perl, etc. I've done some C though and I'd be happy to do more.
> 
> Anyway I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the following:
> 
> 1. Recent Linux Journal article implies gnucash is hard to install and
> doesn't do well with .QIF files.
> My experience on FreeBSD was that it was a simple "make install" to
> install. Perhaps Linux IS worse, I don't know.
> Also my Quicken data came across pretty well - so far I discovered only
> one problem - split transactions get truncated to one of the split values.
> So maybe a letter to the LJ is in order.

The versions described were pretty old.  

And GnuCash is as "challenging" to install as GNOME.

The fact that there's only one FreeBSD probably does make it somewhat
simpler to get its configuration stable...

> 2. This program could use more reports! I'll admit I haven't even looked
> at the docs on adding stuff yet but this is an area of some weakness in my
> opinion.

The more the merrier.

> 3. Perhaps a budget subsystem that tied to reports would be good. I would
> miss that quite a bit in mograting from Quicken.

There is functionality under way; the problem is in integrating a good
GUI that provides sufficient power/expressiveness to make up a useful
budget without simultaneously making peoples' heads explode at the
complexity of using it.

> 4. It would be nice if the existing reports esp transaction could export
> to a tab-delimited file or some other format that can be read by gnumeric.

There's actually some Guile code out there that knows how to generate
Gnumeric input; I've not seen about integrating it in to actually make
it produce other than toy reports.

> I see by a brief look at the source that the reports are all done in
> scheme. I've just been starting to learn that language. I'll have to get
> to work! Is "The little Schemer" an alright intro? It seems pretty
> simple-minded in a way.

The Little Schemer is an interesting book to go through, and presents
some useful principles.  It is intentionally _very_ theoretical, so
that I'd put it as a "third" priority.

Far more complete is SICP (Structure & Interpretation of Computer
Programs), although it too is rather theoretical.

Some extremely useful online resources include:

<LI><a href="http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/Teaching/Lectures/">Rice PLT TeachScheme Project: Lecture Notes</a>
<LI><a href="http://www.scheme.com/tspl2d/index.html">The Scheme Programming Language, 2nd Edition</a>
<LI><a href="http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/r5rs_toc.html">Scheme R5RS Specifications</a>

What the "world probably needs" is an O'Reilly "Programming Scheme"
book; it's not there yet.
--
cbbrowne@acm.org - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/scheme.html>
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.