Generic Transaction import discussion

[Christian Stimming]

Hi Benoit,

in the transaction importer I basically see two problems, one principal 
one and one GUI one:

* Currently imported transactions are created as transactions with one 
split (haven't checked this week, though). IMHO this is a BAD THING 
(tm). I would *very, very much* prefer the way this was handled in the 
QIF importer, where by default any transaction was created with one 
split in the imported account and the other split into some default 
account. This way, at least we end up with correct double-entry 
transactions. Additionally, the QIF importer presented the list of 
transactions to the user, showing also the "other" account. Then the 
user could either leave that "other" account to be the default one, or 
could choose a different "other" account. Yet additionally, the QIF 
importer remembered the choice of the other account (very much similar 
to the auto-completion features in the register), and tried to fill in 
the remembered other accounts for all transactions possible. This is 
very much the same thing I would eventually like to have in the generic 
importer.

* The GUI shows the list of imported transactions in the listView 
top-left. Each time a transaction is selected in the listview, the state 
of the transaction can be chosen by the buttons lower-left. IMHO that's 
not a good thing but is rather confusing. If the GUI wants to present a 
choice of different states for each transaction, then this should be 
presented right next to each transaction -- not "first click on 
transaction, then choose among one out of several buttons somewhere else 
in this window". I would very much prefer e.g. something like a 
drop-down list right next to each transaction. Or maybe even some of 
these choices aren't needed at all. IIRC in the QIF importer there was 
only one of these choices available, "Transaction is a duplicate of 
existing Transaction", which was a simple flag in each line of the 
listview... if I recall correctly. Anyway, all other choices didn't have 
to be chosen by the user but were rather derived implicitly one way or 
another. Anyway, I think this GUI probably can still be improved. But 
the matching itself is already really good. Keep up the good work.

Christian