Books/Accounting Periods proposal

[Christopher Browne]

On Mon, 09 Apr 2001 12:00:58 CDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
linas@backlot.linas.org (Linas Vepstas)  said:
> On Sat, Apr 07, 2001 at 12:01:31PM -0400, James LewisMoss was heard
> to remark:
>> This brings up something I was thinking.
>>
>> It'd be nice to stop using "files" as such to save gnucash data.
>> Instead give the user a default path (which they can add to if they
>> like) and search for books on that path.
>>
>> If they wanted to open a new book they'd say "New Book".  It'd prompt
>> them for a name and then handle all the file creation for them without
>> them having to pick a file name and location.
>>
>> Pros: gives us the ability to easily do the above with a setup like
>> TestAccount/
>> TestAccount/Info
>> TestAccount/Year1999
>> TestAccount/Year2000
>> TestAccount/Current
>> TestAccount/config.options
>> TestAccount/DefaultReports
>> TestAccount/etc
>>
>> Cons: takes control over the file setup from the user
>>
>> What do people think?

> I'm for it.

> (however, files are supposed to be written out by the 'backend',
> just like it is for the sql & the rpc backend.  We'd need some
> generic api to allow the above, so tht e.g. sql, which doesn't need
> any of this, remains unaffected ...

Based on the XML schema I'd outlined, something like this might be
managed via:

<gnc>
  <datastore status="LOCAL" importance="MANDATORY">
    <location> 
      <format type="XML"/>
	<file> /home/cbbrowne/financial/current.xml </file>
    </location>
  </datastore>
  <datastore status="ARCHIVES" importance="OPTIONAL">
    <location> 
      <format type="XML"/>
	<file> /home/cbbrowne/financial/Year1999.xml </file>
    </location>
  </datastore>
  <datastore status="ARCHIVES" importance="OPTIONAL">
    <location> 
      <format type="XML"/>
	<file> /home/cbbrowne/financial/Year2000.xml </file>
    </location>
  </datastore>
</gnc>
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