code in cvs is broken

Bill Gribble grib@linuxdevel.com
19 Nov 2001 13:32:24 -0600


On Mon, 2001-11-19 at 13:19, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> Right. Don't write a parser.  Don't load the currencies from a file.
> Let the engine start out empty, buck-naked.  The engine does not need
> to know about currencies; the engine shouldn't read initialization info
> from a file.

Linas, 

That's the way it started out.  The engine didn't know anything about
any currencies. That's why we thought it was OK to do the currency
parsing in Scheme... it wasn't part of the engine, just the app.

However, that approach has caused problems from the get-go with every
scripting or other application of the engine we've seen.  You can't load
a file without knowing about the ISO currencies, nor can you create or
save one.  One approach was to figure out which ISO currencies were in
use by a file, then save those with the other user-created commodities,
but then what does that really get you?  The ISO currencies really are a
"universal" and ought not to be saved with the user's data IMO. 

To me, it's important that we support scriptability to the extent that
you don't have to load the whole gnucash app to deal with your file,
load a QIF, etc. if you can do it from the command line.  We could
create another loadable module that pokes the ISO currencies into the
engine.

b.g.