Multi currency discussion cont'd

[Jan Nielsen]

Hi Christian,

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>On Montag, 30. Dezember 2002 15:57, Jan Nielsen wrote:
>  
>
>>I have been testing some of the multi currency functionality introduced
>>in gnucash after my initial observations about a month back.
>>    
>>
>
>Very good. Please continue to do so, and report any unexpected behaviour 
>and/or bugs. We really depend on user feedback. Thanks a lot.
>
>As for your detailed points: If you encounter one specific problem, please 
>think about whether you can file a bugzilla bug report 
>http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=GnuCash . Or maybe this 
>problem has already been reported in bugzilla -- then you can add more 
>comments to the existing report. Bugzilla really helps the developers to keep 
>track of what still needs to be dealt with.
>  
>
I'll post things to bugzilla when I get an idea of what the consensus 
about some of the functionality here should be.

>>1) When specifying a transfer between two differently "currencied"
>>accounts using the "To amount" mechanism I expected that it would be
>>possible to go back and adjust one of the the sides independently of the
>>other. 
>>    
>>
>
>I totally agree. Part of it is already solved since the "Edit Exchange Rate" 
>dialog opens automatically. Part of this is definitely a bug as reported in 
>http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102161 . If you have any further 
>observations to add, please comment on the bug in bugzilla.
>
That seems to cover what I talking about. However, I'm not really sure 
that all the different ways of getting there are working the same way. 
I'll do some more testing and get back when I have something to add.

>>2) When making a transfer between two differently currencied accounts
>>from the ledger gnucash apparently automatically finds some old exchange
>>rate . IMHO
>>it should at least be possible to configure a preference that a)
>>automatically brings up the transfer dialog identical to the toolbar
>>transfer button when making a transfer between two accounts with
>>different currencies 
>>    
>>
>
>When I last tested (with CVS from December 29), I automatically got exactly 
>that transfer dialog. Note that the behaviour in the register is strongly 
>dependent on the current view mode. This of course shouldn't be the case in 
>the final stable version, but we're not there yet. So if you saw some 
>unexpected behaviour, please describe how you got there as detailed as 
>possible (e.g. whether you typed Enter or Tab, which view mode you used, and 
>so on).
>
Okay, I have not been able to get my gnucash to do what you are talking 
about but I'll give a bit more testing.

>>3) Reports:
>>
>>Account summary: All accounts are listed but with $0.00 as balance. I
>>have my currency preference set to EUR and use locale C and I do not
>>have a single $ entry in my data.
>>    
>>
>
>@§%$!! This has been asked a zillion times before. The "Default currency" 
>preference should be called "Default currency for new accounts", *not* 
>default currency for reports. The default currency for reports follows the 
>locale. I.e., if you run LANG=C, you get USD as default currency, whereas if 
>you run e.g. LANG=de_DE, you get EUR as default currency. 
>
>I've changed the name of this option now. It is now called "New Account 
>Default Currency".
>
>Pretty much all of your problems with reports and "empty data" will probably 
>be resolved if you manually choose another report currency.
>
I think that makes some sort of sense (changing the name of the option). 
However, that does really not touch on the problem I see. First of all, 
I think all major settings needs to be overrideable wrt to locale. I 
have a lot of good reasons for not using other locales than C and I 
really dislike having problems with programs that blindly and 
unchangeably follows general locale settings. So my suggestion would be 
that it should at least be possible to set a "default currency for 
reports" as well.

>>select "Edit report options" I get a) for expense accounts: "Badly
>>formed options URL: report-id50" 
>>    
>>
>
>Yes, I've seen that, too. That's a bug and I have no idea about that as well. 
>Please file it in bugzilla.
>
>  
>
>>The top left pane which says:
>>
>>"Welcome to GnuCash 1.8!
>>GnuCash 1.8 has lots of nice features. Here are a few.
>>
>>Edit Options   Single Report"
>>
>>seems particulary useless to me. In general this report suffers from
>>layout problems. The reports should be a easy to understand overview,
>>but it is very messy. 
>>    
>>
>
>Totally agreed. Please feel free to submit an improved layout suggestion.
>
>  
>
>>The pie charts are about 2 mm in diameter and the legend is so big that they
>>take up all the available space. The top left space is completely unused.
>>    
>>
>
>The pie charts (and all graphical reports) have the problem that we cannot 
>determine the font size in advance, and we also cannot know the length of the 
>account names in advance. So we had to make reasonable guesses about what the 
>space requirements for the legend are, and then chose a pie chart size big 
>enough so that a resonable pie chart shows up. Obviously this didn't work out 
>in your case. Again, please feel free to suggest improved size parameters 
>here.
>  
>
I think this is a fundamental problem. I have recently been working on a 
similar problem with one of our own products. Basically, the conclusion 
is that any system that need to rely on magic numbers etc is condemned 
forever to produce ugly looking graphics.

And without being able to finely control layout parameters, I don't 
believe it even makes sense starting to look at better-looking layout 
schemes. BTW, after having looked at the complexity of the graphics (or 
rather lack thereof) created by GnuCash I am even more perplexed at the 
choice of using an external drawing system (libguppi, if I understand 
correctly) to create these charts if that is what creates this problem. 
But then the actual scheme implementation of these reports makes me 
somewhat unwilling to actually dive into the code and figure it out.

>>"Sample and Custom: Custom Multicolumn View" shows up as a completely
>> blank page. Again the name is unfortunate, and the fact that it does
>>not do anything just makes it worse ;-)
>>    
>>
>
>Did you (finally) understand what it does (in its option dialog)? If yes, what 
>name would you suggest for that report? What other behaviour would you expect 
>from that kind of report framework?
>  
>
I think this points to a fundamental problem with the logic in GnuCash 
menus. Normally, a user would expect to be led through a series of 
actions where one actions sets up things leading to the next. However, 
often gnucash follows a somewhat twisted internal logic such as:  1) 
User click on  "Reports" and a menu opens; 2) user selects "Sample and 
Custom" and a sub menu opens; 3) user selects "custom multicolumn 
report" and a new blank window opens; .......... And then everything 
stops there. There is absolutely nothing that suggests that "Options" on 
the toolbar is in any connected to the previous action (and in 
particular that it is an integral and indispensible action).

However, the name should somehow suggest to the user that we are talking 
to about a semi automatic report _builder_. Quicken has a similar thing, 
but I cannot remember what they call it.

But I still think that the name is  unimportant as long as there is 
nothing to suggest how to use it

>>"Sample and Custom: Custom Web Report" gets the gnucash.org homepage.
>>But  either this report should have a different name (such as
>>"GnuCash.org Homepage") or it should be removed. Most users expect
>>gnucash be a financial program and not a web browser.
>>
| Interesting point. 

I'm not kidding, actually. Very often we (in my company's products) have been tempted (and sometimes actually fallen in) to add features simply because they where easy to do and a somewhat twisted logic says that they might even be useful. But that does not make it so. And in particular in software products that are already complicated (such both Gnucash and my companys) this is dangerous and unnecessary. This does not mean that it cannot be useful to have a html browser for internal pages etc.

>>"Sample and Custom: Sample report with examples" probably makes a nice
>>example for somebody who actually understands these things, but for a
>>program that is getting ready for end-users it is a "must-disappear
>>thing". If such an example must be included I would suggest a special
>>"extend gnucash" menu somewhere where most users never arrive.
>>    
>>
>
>Agreed. I'd suggest you file a bug report on that.
>  
>
>>"Income and expense: profits and loss": 
>>    
>>
>[and all other reports]
>  
>
>>Again here I think the default currency should follow
>>the user preference. 
>>    
>>
>
>Explained above, and also in http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87729
>
And I still find it unfortunate ;-)

>>Particularly as there is no way of changing it.
>>    
>>
>
>In the tool bar, click on "Options".
>
Either all options setting for reports should happen in this way or all 
should be possible with the "page link" mechanism. The current situation 
is very confusing (where some pages have links, some not etc). And then 
the naming problems of labels like
1) "Edit report options" 2) "Edit Options" 3) "Single Report" for the 
same object. What is the difference between 1 and 2, and how does 3 
communicate "open this object alone on a new page" ?  Under any 
circumstances "Options" in the toolbar is not intuitively connected to 
the reports (and for the multi report pages it is not any longer useful 
for configuring each individual report object).

All the best

Jan