Draft content now in new location

[Geert Janssens]

On Monday 16 August 2010, Thomas Bullock wrote:
> Everyone,
> 
> Thanks to all comments and instructions I learned about the GC wiki which
>  is not inside wikipedia.  My mistake.  My point in putting the content in
>  the wiki was for all to have a chance to look at the proposed change.
> 
> So for what now is listed at the new (to me) location is just the content I
>  am proposing.  It is in xml formatting, not in patch notation, because all
>  of it is intended to be inserted in one place.  When I get to the patch
>  stage, the patch will show all the expected changes wherever they appear.
> 
> Here is where you can find what I am proposing:
>                                
>  http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Concept_Guide#Ongoing_work
> 
> Thanks to Derek, John, and Geert for pulling me into the direction and path
>  most are used to.
> 
> Tom
> 
Tom,

I am reading through your draft content. Nice work so far, thanks.

Below are some suggestions that could help you improve on it. Feel free to 
agree or disagree with any of them though :)

* Some words are split across lines, like amoratiza<newline>tion in the first 
listitem of your first ordered list. I'm not really sure that is a good idea. 
As far as I know xml, it will replace any sequence of whitspaces with exactly 
one space, so this would end up in the documentation as amortiaza tion. As far 
as I know you can't assume the final document to split lines in the same 
places are your source. So as I see it, these split words are best 
concatenated again.

* In this paragraph:
  <para>Recording the expenditures on the trip would be much the same.  
  That is, if you paid by cash you would debit (increase) the reimburse
  able expense account for the money paid in cash and credit (decrease) 
  the Bank account for the payment made.  If the traveler paid by credit 
  card, the debit side would be the same as just described,  but the 
  credit (here, an increase) would be to the account for the credit card 
  company.</para> 
=> Shouldn't Bank account in your example really be "Cash in Wallet account" 
or "Cash Asset account" or simply "Cash account" ? I think it's confusing at 
least if not incorrect to refer to a Bank account for a cash payment.

* There's another split word in that paragraph by the way: 
"reimbourse<newline>able"

* In the Reimbursable Expense topic you describe several debit actions as 
"increase" and credit actions as "decrease". In the Travel Expense topic 
however, you call both the credit and debit actions "increase".

* My spelling checker seems to prefer "reimbursable" instead of 
"reimburseable", but I'm not a native English speaker so I can't tell you for 
sure which one should be correct.

* You have set some titles in all caps (CURRENT ASSETS, SHORT OR LONG-TERM 
ASSETS and LONG-TERM (FIXED) ASSETS). I'd propose not to do that. It's up to 
the stylesheet in the end to decide how to display the information and how 
titles and subtitles should be visually make distinct.

* You sometimes refer to other sections in either your document or elsewhere 
in the guide (like you refer to depreciation elsewhere in the guide, or refer 
to your own main topics from higher up in the document). It can be interesting 
to make such references actual links users can click on. You can find examples 
of this throughout the guide (for example in chapter 2.2 Data Entry Concepts).

* In paragraph:
  <para><guilabel>Leasehold Improvements</guilabel> Where a business does 
  not own the building where it ...
How about: When a business does not own the building where it...

* In that same paragraph you suddenly switch from debit (increase) to increase 
(debit).

* The debit/credit vs increase/decrease wording has always confused me. 
Perhaps it it worth to spend a thourough section on this on its own early on 
in the guide and then use debit/credit only throughout the rest of the guide. 
Then you won't have to repeat the clarification between parentheses again and 
again.

* On a more general note: the guide is organized in big topics (Accounts, 
Transactions,...) and each of these big topics is then detailed in basically 
three sub topics
 1. Concepts (sometimes also called Basic Concepts)
 2. Some sections how it all works
 3. How to set it up and work with it inside GnuCash ("Putting it all 
together")
Your new documentation seems to mix these three more or less together. I'm not 
saying that's wrong or not proper. I'm just pointing it out. You can feel for 
yourself if it would make sense and if you're willing to reorganize the 
information in the same overall structure or not.

* And lastly, while I find your added information very valuable, I'm not sure 
chapter 3 is the right place to add it. Your new sections detail some advanced 
uses of the asset type of accounts, mostly used in a business context. I don't 
think people reading the guide as a first introduction to accounting and 
GnuCash would be able to grasp these business concepts. In my opinion, your 
information is worth to be a chapter on its own. I would put it right before 
the Depreciation chapter and call it "Assets Accounts Revisited" or "Advanced 
Use Of Asset Accounts" or something like that.

What do you think of these suggestions ?

Geert