Reporting system

[Tim M]

On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 9:25 AM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

>
> Christian: Please don't accept Python code into Gnucash. Python has
> version-to-version compatibility problems, and I've found with pure-python
> applications like Gramps that it requires bundling a Python interpreter with
> the application so that everyone gets the same version. That 's for Mac,
> which comes with Python. Windows doesn't, so either the Windows distribution
> will have to include Python or users will have to download ActiveState's. We
> already make them download ActiveState Perl if they want Finance::Quote, and
> have a lot of support issues because of it. Let's not make that worse.
>
> Tim, you realize that in order to rewrite the reports in whatever language
> you like, you'll have to become quite expert at Scheme anyway, right? You're
> not going to save yourself any work or learning by translating the reporting
> system into another language.
>
>
Yes, I realize that :)  But, at least once a rewrite is done it will be much
easier to make changes going forward.


> After all of that cold water, I want to emphasize that I do agree with Tim
> that having the report system in Scheme is a major barrier to users creating
> their own reports, and I agree that it should be rewritten into a more
> widely-understood language. That needs to be in an interpreted language so
> that it remains user-extensible. I think the only viable alternative to
> Scheme is Javascript, for the following reasons:
>
> * We're already shipping WebKit as part of Gnucash for Windows and Mac, so
> there's no extra interpreter to include.
> * We use HTML to display the reports, and Javascript integrates naturally
> with CSS and HTML; that's what it's designed for.
> * Javascript is widely used by inexperienced programmers who want to juice
> up a web page, so it's very approachable by users.
> * Javascript supports many of the same programming styles that Scheme does,
> so converting will be straightforward.
> * We're already using Javascript to draw the graphs, showing that
> Javascript can be introduced one report at a time, or even mixed with
> Scheme, for a gradual migration path.
>
>
I will go with Javascript then.  When I have time I will try to come up with
a strategy to accomplish this before I start to implement anything, but it
may take some time to figure everything out since I will inevitably need to
get a bit more familiar with the existing scheme system before I can make
significant changes.

Thanks,
-Tim


> Regards,
> John Ralls
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-devel mailing list
> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>