Automatic Saving

[Derek Atkins]

linas@linas.org (Linas Vepstas) writes:

> yes.  I'm trying to minimize the amount of crap in pull-down menus,
> minimize the number of buttons.   The idea is that by removing rote
> chores, the user is freed to concentrate on the important stuff
> (instead of thinking, 'gee I have to hit save now').   Its a design
> philosphy, its hard to put into practice.  

Hmm.. Then how often does gtt save its data?  I like the ability to
force it to save before I shutdown my machine (save early, save
often).  Granted, I had to go through the preferences to turn on the
save/reload buttons, but I _DO_ use them all the time.

> > Well, as a power user I prefer to archive my data when I want to
> 
> You can still do this by using command line 'cp' or your favorite
> graphical file browser...  is that OK? 

I suppose that is somewhat ok.  I _think_ I'd prefer some more
intelligent archiving rules (like, archive all data older than date X,
or all data that has been invoiced).

> > archive it.  But for that to work I need to be able to tell the
> > program what data file to open.
> 
> I'm thinking that the way I want to do this is to put the name of the
> data file in the preferences dialog.   That way, you can still
> set it, but its not as easy as 'save/restore'.  The goal is to
> avoid cluttering the top-level GUI interface ... 

I'm not sure I like this.  While I acknowledge that avoiding UI
clutter is a good thing, the name of the data file is NOT, imho,
something that should be ignored.  Clearly you can/should provide a
default name, but the user should be able to easily say "I want to
look at _this_ data file".

> Ahh, yes.   FWIW, the newest version 2.1.4 does a major cleanup
> of the scheme interfaces.  This means the html can be made a
> *lot* prettier.  The old crappy table-layout thing is history.

Cool.  Unfortunately I'm still on a gnome-1.4 system so I can't
play with this (yet).

> > I'd also like to see gnotime interface into gnucash's invoicing system
> > and customer management system.
> 
> How?

I dont know -- I think we'd have to agree on some interface to do so.
This was more of a pipe-dream kind of thing, but some way to script a
new invoice in gnucash would be a good thing, IMHO.

> I think I've made gtt export real easy: give me an example of the
> export format, and I'll write the thing in half an hour (see the 
> tab-delim.ghtml example file).  But I don't know how to get gnucash
> to import.  Should gnotime export OFX?  Care to provide an example?

Well, I think we'll have to do that.  right now there isn't any way to
import invoice data into gnucash.  OFX wont help; OFX only inputs
transactional data, not invoice data (which is separate), and has no
way to tie it to company information.

> I do not yet know how to do import into gnotime.

Well, all I would think of importing into gnotime would be a list of
customers/projects.

> --linas

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord@MIT.EDU                        PGP key available