Scheduled Transactions

Josh Sled jsled@asynchronous.org
Sat, 20 Apr 2002 11:28:50 -0700


On Sat, Apr 20, 2002 at 07:16:05AM -0400, Tim Wunder wrote:

| Back when I used that "other" O/S, I used Quciken 5. It would open to a large 
| calendar, with all the transactions listed on the days they happened, or will 
| happen, 

A calendar is coming, but I'm not too thrilled with gtk's calendar,
and the Evolution calendars aren't space-efficient enough for my liking.

What I want is what's I've termed a gnc-densecal: a minimal-space-taking,
dense calendar, which can display the whole year in just as little space
as possible; without text, this is like:

 * Absolute minimums required:
 * . 7 days per week      : 7 px horizontally
 * . borders between days : 6 px
 * . 52 weeks/year        : 52 px
 * . borders between weeks: 51 px
 *                        ------------
 * 1 column:               w: 13px, h: 103px
 * 2 columns:              w: 28px, h: 53px
 * 3 columns:              w: 41px, h: 27px
 * 4 columns:              w: ... calculate

Of course, if the user wants the window larger, well, then the calendar
fills the space.  And, of course, it helps to have text. :)  But, I
definitely plan to create something like this, soon.

If anyone has seen a GTK calendar thingy that might be good, please let
me know.

| Quicken called them register transactions if the were actually posted 
| to an account, or scheduled transactions.  Scheduled transactions could be 
| turned into register transactions by right-clicking the transaction and 
| chosing to create it.

I'm not understanding the difference here.  Is it that 'register
transactions' are already posted, while 'scheduled transactions' are
strictly in the future?  Or that 'register transactions' have a transaction
to post [when due], whereas 'scheduled transactions' are just reminders?

Is this distinction something you/others desire?

| When I started Quicken, any scheduled transactions due, or past due, would 
| display in a dialog and I could create then from that dialog, or not, 
| individually.

So that ["create then [...] individually"] was what I was talking about in
the last mail.  Is the granularity: "[don't] create all \"Car Payment\"s"
or is it "[don't] create this, that and this \"Car Payment\"s"?  I just
don't know how people expect to use that feature.

| From the calendar, new transactions (both register and scheduled) could be 
| created by right-clicking the calendar day. I would usually wsitch to the 
| account view to create register transactions, but I'd make scheduled 
| transactions from the calendar.

As I don't understand the difference, this doesn't make a lot of sense.

| Additionally, the calendar page had the ability to show a bar graph at the 
| bottom of the page, displaying the account balance (of select accounts, I 
| usually would show savings and checking). The graph would take into account 
| scheduled and register tansactions. It was a great budgeting tool for me.

Yes.  I know budgeting wants this [and a cash-flow graph, too, which is
probably a guppi enhancement], but it seems like the new SX List window
is something like: [M-x picture-mode r0x0rz ;)]

+---------------------------+
|Scheduled Transaction List |
+---------------------------------------------+
| +-clist-------+ +-gnc_denseCal------------+ |
| |x:SX_0|detail| | xo | x  | x  | x  | x   | |
| |#:SX_1|detail| |#x @|#x  |#x  |#x @|#x   | |
| |@:SX_2|detail| |----+----+----+----+-----| |
| |o:SX_3|detail| | x  | x  | x *| x  | x   | |
| |     ...     | |#x  |#x @|#x  |#x  |#x   | |
| +-------------+ +-------------------------+ |
| +-gnc_cashFlow----------------------------+ |
| |^vv--^^^vv^v^^v^v--^^vvvv--v---vv--vv^vv-| |
| +-----------------------------------------+ |
+---------------------------------------------+

With the [x#@o] being color-coding of scheduled transaction recurrance
dates in the denseCal... which also supports mouse-over on the dense/small
individual dates in the calendar and other interactivity.

I intend to use this dense cal in the SX editor to get a better "example"
display, too.

| I could make changes to scheduled transactions (like adding a new car payment, 
| or changing my weekly cash allowance or changing how much I pay against my 
| equity loan...) and see where my account balance would stand after several 
| months simply by clicking forward on the calendar.

Indeed ... or maybe in this case, changing the scale or pulling the tape
on the cashFlow display...?

I'd rather not capitulate too much to stuff that should really be part
of the Budgeting/PersonalFinancialPlanning workbench, but as that is ~1.5
years away ... maybe we should. ;)

| If it'd help you, I could go through the effort of creating some screen shots 
| depicting it. (I assume you can capture screenshots of apps running in 
| WINE...).

I've consciously stayed away from looking at other programs, but I'm better,
now.  If you want to go through the effort, I'll look at the pics.

| Tim

...jsled

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