major changes coming up

[Dave Peticolas]

Starting very soon, the GnuCash development version will undergo
several major changes. First, the file format will be switched to XML
instead of a binary format. Second, currencies will no longer be just
strings, but will instead be objects that contain additional
information such as domain (ISO currencies, NASDAQ stocks, etc.) and
rounding information. Third, numbers will be stored in a fixed
precision format instead of floating-point.

Also, the register is undergoing major revisions, some of which are
not visible to the user (they are intended to make the register go
faster) but will doubtless introduce some glitches that need to be
worked out. Some of the register changes will be user-visible, such
as changing the way memos are used with splits and transactions, and
displaying and editing transactions in a better way (hopefully).

Finally, the way currencies and accounts are related may be changing
as well, as per previous discussions on this list.

All of these changes will make what has been a nominally unstable
version into a Really Unstable (TM) version. And, while we definitely
appreciate both your help in finding the inevitable bugs that will be
created by this process and your feedback for improving the interface,
we also *strongly* recommend that, at least for a while, you do not
use the very latest development version to manage real financial data.

Right before I apply the XML changes, I will tag the tree with
the tag 'gnucash-pre-xml-patch'. This will let you easily obtain
a development version that still uses the old binary format.

thanks,
dave