test routines

[Derek Atkins]

Quoting David Hampton <hampton-gnucash at rainbolthampton.net>:

> On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 09:53 -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:
>> Quoting Neil Williams <linux at codehelp.co.uk>:
>> > iso-4217-currencies.c which CashUtil cannot generate from the scheme.
>> >
>> > I'll work on gnc-pricedb.c but is there a better way of handling
>> > iso-4217-currencies.c?
>>
>> I don't understand what's wrong with the current iso-4217-currencies.c
>> generator.  It's a self-contained guile script.  Think of it in the
>> same way as
>> a self-contained perl script.  Would you object to a perl script to generate
>> the currencies code?  If not, then why object to a guile script?
>
> I'd prefer that the the iso-4217-currencies.scm file be converted to
> XML.  A common issue I see on the mailing lists is that some country or
> other has changed their currency and there's no way for users in that
> country to enter the new currency into gnucash and they have to wait for
> a new release.  It the currencies file was on disk in a user editable
> form, instead of compiled into the binary, it would solve that problem.

My concern is that different people who may be sharing data files might have
different sets of currencies.  Currencies don't change all that often.  I'd be
concerned about users adding random currencies to their "XML" file.

If there's really an issue with the currencies being hard-coded then we should
think hard about why they are hard-coded.  For one thing, we need to handle
conversions, like when one currency gets converted into another (or changes
names, values, etc).

For another thing, we should just have more releases. ;)

I'll note that a long long time ago the currencies were actually created at
runtime from Scheme.  Now they are created at runtime from C.  I suppose the
former was earlier to deal with.

I just don't see this as a major issue; I don't think it's bad to 
hard-code the
ISO currencies.  That list just isn't very volatile, and it could lead to much
user confusion to allow them to modify that list willy-nilly.

> David

-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
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