Undo

[Karl Chen]

Hi Gnucash developers,

First, excellent work - Gnucash is awesome.  I especially
appreciate the book data format which has allowed me to make batch
changes externally.

I have a wishlist request: Undo functionality.  I think Undo
(various levels described below) would add a LOT to usability.

I've searched the mailing lists and Bugzilla and only found
something about CashUtil, which seems abandoned.  I'd like to
request and add a Bugzilla wishlist item for Undo functionality in
Gnucash.

It's especially easy to lose text because of the auto-complete
feature.  It's easy to accidentally change the account of a split
and then have to hunt around to find it.  If you accidentally
change an amount or date field, even if you realized what you just
did, you might not remember the value to revert to.  I often have
to look in backups just to get back a value I accidentally
changed.  (I version-control the account file so at least I can do
this reliably.)

I see the following kinds of Undo with increasing utility and
implementation difficulty:

U1. Undo in account register entry fields (text, date, account,
    amount, etc.) while editing a transaction.

U2. Undo for transaction insert, delete, modify, after the
    transaction has been committed.

U3. Undo for larger or more complex operations, such as deleting
    an account.

Lack of U1 is a big hit to usability - it's almost a standard in
GUI applications, since default widgets support this.
Implementation of U1 is the easiest since it's "widget-local".
The next level, U2, is harder, but would also improve Gnucash a
lot.  The "please confirm" dialogs would be obsoleted by U2.  U1
and U2 have orthogonal implementation, and having U2 is almost as
good as having both U1 and U2 since you can save and undo the
entire transaction.

Even just single-level undo would help a lot, though sequential
undo (and redo) would be even better and is worth the extra
marginal effort.

For an example of a project with great Undo support, see Gimp.
You can undo pretty much any operation; nothing requires
confirmation.

Thanks for reading so far and I would love to get feedback.

-- 
Karl 2007-02-22 14:15