Fwd: World friendlier printable invoices

[Chris Shoemaker]

On Tue, Oct 02, 2007 at 11:03:29AM -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:
> As I've said over and over, the REAL answer is to integrate
> e-guile and then invoices could be an HTML-template with embedded
> guile, instead of a scheme program that happens to generate HTML.
> I'm still waiting for someone to offer to implement that.  :-D

Just for the record, and because, as you point out, this has been
repeated several times...

I agree that the solution is an html templating system.  However,
there are many better examples than eguile, if one is willing to use
a scripting language other than guile.

I, for one, would not recommend anyone actually attempt to integrate
e-guile, as that is essentially equivalent to writing and maintaining
our own templating system.  Also, I think it's very unlikely that anyone
will ever get it to do anything impressive.

Instead, if there is anyone interested, I would recommend that they
adapt the swig .i files to the popular scripting language of their
preference, and use the popular templating system of their choice.
This is a far better engineering decision, IMO, and far easier to do,
also.  It's probably about 80 hours work to the initial working system
for someone already familiar with the relevant tools.

If I only had the time...

-chris


> 
> -derek
> 
> Quoting Monte Jewell <mjewell at openmissoula.org>:
> 
> > I'm a gnucash newbie but very experienced with proprietary billing 
> > systems for small law offices.
> >
> > I'm reading everything I can find on how to edit the gnucash 
> > templates, but my invoices still look like I'm selling automotive 
> > parts (not that there would be anything wrong with that if I wasn't 
> > actually drafting separation agreements . . . )
> >
> > I want to help and to gnu use-share-study-improve the code, esp with 
> > nonprofit projects that I volunteer with who have no money to be 
> > spending on proprietary licenses but have to do it anyway.
> >
> > This invoice editing problem is kicking my butt so far.
> >
> > mj
> > ***
> > Monte Jewell PC Attorney at Law
> > 500 N Higgins Ave Ste 107
> > Missoula MT  59802
> > www.montejewell.com
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU>
> >
> > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:09:56
> > To:"Bryan Cebuliak" <bryan.cebuliak at gmail.com>
> > Cc:gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
> > Subject: Re: Fwd: World friendlier printable invoices
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > "Bryan Cebuliak" <bryan.cebuliak at gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >> Pardon me, I am really very new at this. Would you like me to do that
> >> now with the files or have you already done it?  Will just a plain
> >> diff file.scm filenew.scm > diffoutfile
> >> do the trick?
> >
> > Usually the way to do it would be:
> >
> >  svn diff
> >
> >> Attached please file the diff output files including the total ex tax
> >> localisation changes.
> >
> > Unfortunately you:
> >
> > a) ran diff manually
> > b) didn't use '-u' to create a unified diff
> >
> >> Also, do you have an idea why opening gnucash with a saved
> >> fancy-invoice report in the old format using the new fancy-invoice.scm
> >> etc crashes gnucash? The same may happen with the the other files. Not
> >> tested yet. This is avoided if the old report tab is closed prior to
> >> saving before upgrading the invoice files. This is a show stopper if
> >> it happened with a gnucash upgrade.
> >
> > Umm... Without really seeing your changes (while my brain can process
> > a unified diff, I can't really process a non-context/non-unified diff)
> > I can only guess.  My first guess is that you changed the available
> > options so that when gnucash reloads the options into the report it
> > fails.  But I don't know without seeing the code and seeing the
> > crash backtrace.
> >
> > It would be "allowed" in a major release change, but certainly not
> > within a stable release.  E.g., this happened between 1.6 -> 1.8
> > and again from 2.0 -> 2.2.  (It might have happened from 1.8 -> 2.0
> > too, but I don't recall).
> >
> > -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
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnucash-devel mailing list
> > gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
> > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
>        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
> 
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