development contribution (business-..)

[Derek Atkins]

Rich Johnson <rjohnson at dogstar-interactive.com> writes:

> Well, it's time to stop lurking and start contributing.

Excellent!

> My main complaint lies with the business UI dialogs.  I find them to
> be clunky.  I'd like to see some(all) of the following:
>   - pop-up lists of vendors (enter bills dialog)
>   - pop-up list of vendors with unpaid bills (pay bills dialog)
>   - amount owed to specific vendor in pay bills dialog
>   - keystroke entry of vendor name in bill entry/payment dialogs
>   - auto-completion of vendor name in bill entry/payment dialogs

FYI, pop-up lists are going to be hard because, technically, you don't
ever have a list of all vendors (or customers, or employees).  They
are all database searches, and API-wise the only way to get a list is
to perform a database search.

To work around this, and provide the UI that you (and others) want we
need an object called a phrase wheel (see the discussions from
November 2002 about this topic).  A phrase wheel would behave somewhat
like the account-list drop-down menu in the register, except you
_have_ to type something into the textbox in order to get the list.
Once the user pauses typing it would search and create a
menu/autocompletion based on the results of the search.

I even have some donated Python code that implements a phrase wheel,
but my python is non-existant so I can't convert it to C for use in
GnuCash.  If someone (you?) want to see the python code in order to
translate the phrase wheel from python to C, I will gladly pass it
along.

The "total owed" is a great idea and has been on my list, but I'll
gladly accept a patch to fix that one.  That should be relatively
easy.

> I propose to start by adding documentation for the functions in
> business/business-core.   How about it?

Are you looking at the HEAD branch in CVS?  Lots of the functions are
already documented there.  If you're not working in HEAD, you probably
should (or perhaps the G2 branch).  Docs should be updated in HEAD.
UI work should probably be done in the g2 branch.

> Anyone want to help me get off on the right foot?

Do you have specific questions?

> Or should I just post proposed text to this list prior to posting the
> diffs.

Diffs should be sent to gnucash-patches (or, better yet, create a bug
report, attach the patch there, set the keyword "PATCH", and then send
mail that you've done that).

> Thanks,
> --rich

Good Luck!

-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 at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available