discussion generic import design

Benoit Grégoire bock@step.polymtl.ca
Mon, 28 Oct 2002 14:10:43 -0500


On Monday 28 October 2002 07:34, you wrote:
> Hi Benoit,
>
> are you still working on the generic importer? I'm sorry about the fuzz
> I created last week. It turned out that other issues in the HBCI support
> kept me busy during all the last week, not to mention the German
> translation that I'm now working on. At the end of the day I realized
> that having the generic importer as-is is probably far better than
> spending anew a whole lot of programming time into reinventing the
> wheel. That's why the HBCI importer is probably quite likely to continue
> using the generic importer, even though it doesn't absolutely fit the
> model of HBCI transactions -- but it's a great thing to have it.
>
> Are you working on a specific part of the importer right now? I might
> hop in and implement something (e.g. the payee/memo matching part) in
> that as well.

Thanks, don't worry about it.

I am just back from vacation and I have a few fires to put out before I resume 
working on gnucash.  I should get back to it by midweek.

I do intend to keep working on the importer, and since you will be using it, 
eventually implement most of what I layed out in the mail I sent on october 
21.  (Making the matcher parentable into a wizard page, the action 
pseudo-button, etc.).    I intend to concentrate on the pseudo-buttons for 
1.8, since I think it would be a major usability improvement.  I also intend, 
time permiting, to make the score of the matcher graphical.  (vertical lines, 
red for no probable match, yellow for inconclusive, green for probable 
match).  I'm sure it's possible to generate the pixmap dynamically, but I 
haven't worked with pixmaps for well over 4 years (Last time was with Xlib on 
AIX, yuck). 

I think the best thing you could work on is indeed (If I understand you 
properly) the match remembering functions I discussed in the mail I sent on 
the 21st:

Account * gnc_import_find_dest_account(char * match_text) and
void gnc_import_set_dest_account(char * match_text, Account * dest_account).  
These should be implemented in a new C file and included in the generic 
importers public include file.

BTW, you might want to take a second look at the october 21 mail and comment 
again, from a more technical point of view, now that you decided to go on 
using the generic importer.  (Oh and BTW I agree with you comments about the 
user preferences)

Have a nice day,

-- 
Benoit Grégoire
http://step.polymtl.ca/~bock/