Multi currency discussion cont'd

[Christian Stimming]

Jan Nielsen wrote:

>> No, that's not how it works.  When you create a transaction it
>> determines the transaction currency (based on your default currency or
>> the currency of the account), and then for each split it stores the
>> split's amount (which is denoted in the split's account's
>> commodity/currency) and the split's value (which is denoted in the
>> transaction currency).  The exchange rate is the ratio between the
>> amount and the value.
>>
>> What you want to do is "Edit Exchange Rate".  Select the transaction
>> you need to change and then click on Actions -> Edit Exchange Rate.
>> Then change the exchange rate to what you need it to be.  This will do
>> what you want to do -- change the ratio between the "amount" and the
>> "value".
>>
> Now, this is exactly what I assumed gnucash was doing. However, my point 
> is exactly that when the user specifies the transaction using the "To 
> amount" method, he is really saying that it is not the exchange rate but 
> the exact amount that matters. So when gnucash makes a "translation" of 
> an amount relation to an exchange rate and then uses that for all 
> subsequent recalculations, my opinion is that the spirit of the "To 
> amount" method is violated.

I agree with Jan on this point. I'd like to point out that this sort of 
thing was easily been achieved in the currency-account's (and stock 
account) register. In the currency-account register, you changed one out 
of the three things: from-amount, rate, to-amount, and the register then 
asked you which of the others should be adapted, in order to arrive at a 
balanced transaction.

Actually we might need a dialog just like that, or maybe an additional 
radio button group in the multi-currency txn dialog: "Which part of this 
transaction should be recalculated? From-Amount [in this account], 
Price, To-Amount [in the other account]" or similar.

The point here about the design of the new multi-currency model is that 
the above action was easily achievable, since every multi-currency 
transaction went into an intermediate currency-account and thus offered 
the GUI for these changes (in the currency-account register). Now that 
we don't require the intermediate currency-account any longer, we still 
need to provide possibilities to achieve the above actions. That's what 
this discussion (and my request for the release delay) is about.

Christian