Proposal for modifying gnucash to use exact quantities

[Bill Gribble]

On Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 08:14:47AM -0500, Christopher Browne wrote:
> Unfortunately, all Bill has provided is a way of representing and
> manipulating rational values.
>
> But I don't think it represents what people really need to do with
> _financial amounts_.
> 
> Once we get that library, the conclusion is liable to be:
> "Well, now let's build something that works with transactions, and
> adds, prices, and values them."

Chris, I'm looking at this problem from a different perspective.  

  - I am trying to fix the problem that gnucash has with representation
    of numbers.  We can get incorrect results, which is not acceptable.
  - I am NOT trying to re-architect gnucash at this point.  I want to
    make the minimally-invasive set of changes to correct this problem
    in a reasonable way. 
  - As a side effect, I want the set of changes I make to have as 
    much usefulness outside of gnucash as possible. 
  
The library I have developed is making it easy (if tedious) to fix
gnucash.  Trust me, because I am ACTUALLY DOING IT.  I don't think
anyone else on the list has the time or interest to actually supply
the elbow grease.  Fairly or not, I feel that the fact that I am doing
the work gives my opinion a bit more weight.

I respect your opinions about this, and I know that my irritation with
RKW is probably rubbing off on my reaction to you, but I just don't
think it makes sense to start talking about completely rearchitecting
gnucash at this point.  RKW is comparing my 25k of numeric library
with some expressway or other; if he's right, you are talking about
demolishing the entire highway system and starting from scratch.

b.g.