Scheduled transaction tweaks

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  I'm using the Debian version of GnuCash 1.7.6 (CVS from 2002-12-26).

  I went to schedule a transaction on today (2003-01-01) whose start
  date is tomorrow (2003-01-02) and occurs monthly. I clicked on the
  Advanced button in the Scheduled Transaction dialog. The list of
  scheduled transactions appeared--this is confusing.

  - Do not display the list of scheduled transactions when clicking on
    the Advanced button in the Scheduled Transactions dialog. You should
    only get the Scheduled Transactions dialog when running the
    Actions->Scheduled Transactions->Scheduled Transactions Editor.
    Hmmm, this command could also be renamed to Actions->Scheduled
    Transactions->Edit.

  Within the Advanced view of the Edit Scheduled Transaction dialog, you
  might consider updating the balloon help for the "Create
  Automatically" option to say how the entry is created, for example,
  "Create the transaction the first time that GnuCash is started on the
  scheduled day. This cannot be done if the transaction uses variables."
  Balloon help is not available for the rest of the options. It would be
  good to say how the user is "Notified" or "Reminded." Email? Popup
  dialog when GnuCash is first started that day? What happens if GnuCash
  was started the day before? Does the transaction not occur? Or does it
  occur after some action is performed?

  [These are, by the way, rhetorical questions. I thought it would be
  useful to let you know what goes through the mind of someone who sees
  this for the first time. The answers should be, in order of benefit:
  obvious, in the balloon help, or available via the Help button, which
  is the next thing I'm going to do ;-).]

  I clicked on "Create Automatically" and then clicked on the Cancel
  button. The warning dialog said "This SX has changed, are you sure you
  want to cancel?" It took me a minute to figure out what SX meant.

  - Don't put cryptic acronyms in dialogs. At the very least,
    s/SX/scheduled transaction/g.

  Usually, clicking on an Advanced button brings up a separate dialog
  from the main dialog. When you dismiss the advanced dialog, you return
  to the original dialog. I was surprised that this wasn't the case
  here. If you use Schedule from the context menu in the register, you
  get the simple view. If you edit a scheduled transaction from the
  Scheduled Transactions dialog, you get the advanced view. Please be
  consistent. I would suggest one of the following:

  a) Make the advanced view the *only* view.
  
  b) Make the simple view the the first view from all sources. Change
     the advanced view so that it does not dismiss the simple view, it
     does not include the Recurrence Frequency information (which is in
     the simple view) and that when you dismiss the advanced view, you
     return to the simple view (simply by closing the advanced view).


  In the GnuCash Preferences->Scheduled Transactions dialog, the balloon
  help is written for the GnuCash programmer, not the GnuCash user. I
  would replace the Since-Last-Run and AutoCreate texts with something
  more like this:

  Run on GnuCash start:

    Create scheduled transactions when GnuCash starts. If this option is
    not selected, you will have to use the Actions->Scheduled
    Transactions->Since Last Run command to create pending transactions.

  Auto-Create new Scheduled Transaction by default

  Rename to:

  Create Scheduled Transactions automatically

    The Create Automatically option is set for all new scheduled
    transactions.

  Notify on new, auto-created Scheduled Transactions

  Rename to:

  Notify when scheduled transactions are added automatically

    The "Notify me when created" option is set for all new scheduled
    transactions.


  The Template Register Lines is set to 6, but I only saw about half a
  line in my initial view. I'm using the enlightenment window manager,
  and didn't "Remember" the dialog size (since this was the first time I
  had seen it).


  Finally, as you recall, I went to schedule a transaction on today
  (2003-01-01) whose start date is tomorrow (2003-01-02) and occurs
  monthly. When I viewed the Scheduled Transactions, however, it showed
  that the first payment was not to occur until 2003-02-02 although it
  should have been 2003-01-02. Other scheduled transactions whose first
  date were later in the month were fine. Off by one error?

  Thanks very, very much for this much needed feature!

--
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD
Maintainer of comp.mail.mh FAQ and MH-E. Vote Libertarian!
If you're passed on the right, you're in the wrong lane.

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