gnucash ideas - (fwd)

[Robert Graham Merkel]

Jason Rennie writes:
 > 
 > jholland@gears.linuxave.net said:
 > > 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. 
 > 
 > I'm also quite interested in working on GNUCash reports once I find some 
 > extra free time :)  I'd like to see three report stages:
 > 
 >   1) "Template" - A scheme file with many parameters that the user may set
 >   2) "Report" - Specific combination of parameters that the user has 
 >      chosen for a specific template.  The user should be able to save and
 >      load each report that he/she creates.
 >   3) "Statement" - A specific report filled with the current data exported
 >      to HTML or some other format.
 > 
 > In other words, I'd like to have it be possible to save parameter 
 > settings rather than having to re-enter them every time.

Absolutely.

I'm doing some work on the infrastructure for doing reports (doing
work on g-wrap to support features needed for wrapping the query
interface), and when that's finished I'll begin work on the new
reports themselves.

Your three-stage view is pretty much like what I'm planning,
however, being able to export to multiple outpuf forms is not nearly as easy
as it sounds - the sticking point is coming up with a way of
describing report formatting in a sufficiently general framework as to
provide useful output in formats as diverse as LaTeX and Gnumeric
XML. We have had several threads about this in the past (check the ML
archives for more details) I had a look at tools for doing so (DSSSL and Jade), 
but we think we'll stick with HTML for now.

------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk@mira.net

------------------------------------------------------------