help

[Chris Lyttle]

On Sun, 2003-01-05 at 20:26, Glen Ditchfield wrote:
> On January 5, 2003 11:48 am, David Hampton wrote:
> > How about just enabling the "Common Accounts" by default?  Its a simple
> > enough setup, and doesn't have the problem of any conflicts if the user
> > wants to enable more sets of accounts.  Perhaps a stripped down version
> > of the common accounts that has:
> >
> > 	Assets:Current Assets:Checking Account
> > 	Income
> > 	Expenses
> 
> The stripped-down version looks good to me.  Give it an account type like 
> "Just a checking account", a description like "The minimal set of accounts 
> needed to use GnuCash", and a detailed description like "Use this if you just 
> want to balance your checkbook.  Later on, you can start tracking income and 
> expenses in more detail if you feel the need."
> 
> I wouldn't want "Common Accounts" selected by default.  When I started using 
> GnuCash, I just wanted to balance my checkbook, and if I'd seen that long 
> list, I'd have said "I'm supposed to track all that!!?", and run screaming 
> back to my homebrew spreadsheet.

I'm not convinced of this. The point of 'Common Accounts' is that its a
set of sensible defaults for the majority of GnuCash users. Though the
simple account setup above is relevant, it by no means should be the
default. Good UI design doesn't say 'bring all UI functionality down to
the lowest/simplest' but to make it easy to use by the majority of
GnuCash users. Now I'm not saying we can't make improvements, but I
think starting with a minimal set like this is an error to think it is
the best way to start off with GnuCash

Chris
-- 
RedHat Certified Engineer #807302549405490.
--------------------------------------------
	|^|
	| |   |^|
	| |^| | |  Life out here is raw 
	| | |^| |  But we will never stop
	| |_|_| |  We will never quit 
	| / __> |  cause we are Metallica
	|/ /    |
	\       /
	 |     |
--------------------------------------------