Posting time bug fix proposal (simplified)

[Charles Day]

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 10:39 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> "Charles Day" <cedayiv at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 9:53 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> >
> >     "Charles Day" <cedayiv at gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >     >     However, the closing transaction needs to be the "last"
> transaction
> >     >     of the day.
> >     >
> >     > Is there any way to tell which transactions were created by book
> >     closing? A
> >     > particular description, for example?
> >
> >     Nope.  There's currently no tag that a txn is a book-closing txn.
> >     One could certainly add a tag in dialog-book-close.c.
> >
> > That means there is no automatic way to tell a book closing transaction
> from a
> > transaction shifted by the bug. So this patch, as is, would screw up
> anyone
> > who has used the book closing feature. Is there anything in the data
> file,
> > perhaps outside of transactions, that could at least show whether the
> book
> > closing feature has been used?
>
> Nope.  One could certainly add a tag going forward but that wouldn't
> help anyone who's already used the book closing feature.
>
> This is why I pointed it out before you committed this change..  I
> wanted to let you know that your approach doesn't quite work give the
> current existing feature-set of GnuCash.  ;-)
>

If there is no automatic way to tell good data from bad, then whole thing
gets a lot harder. I wonder about the scope of this problem. Considering all
features, are midnight and noon the only times currently assigned to
transactions by GnuCash?

If so, then when we read a time other than midnight or noon, we could pop up
a warning stating that the file is bug affected and ask the user whether
they want to proceed with fixing the data. If so, then we would have to ask
whether they have used the book closing features, or any other feature that
sets a time other than midnight. If they haven't, then the algorithm similar
to what I supplied in the patch could run. On the other hand, if they've
used book closing or any other non-midnight feature, we'd need to ask for
more information to be able to sort good from bad. Not sure what questions
would be sufficient here; maybe what time zones they have used GnuCash in.

Anyway, it sounds like a druid might be necessary, and I don't want to spend
that much time on this. I'd rather spend that effort on fixing lots or
adding new investment features.


>
> -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
>

-Charles