Price preference

[David T.]

As more of a user (who lurks on -devel), I think it would be better for the dialog NOT to specify ANYTHING than to suggest something that we know (or can reasonably assume) is wrong. That way lies insanity. And lots of complaints on gnucash-user.

David


________________________________
 From: Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be>
To: John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> 
Cc: GnuCash development list <gnucash-devel at gnucash.org> 
Sent: Thursday, December 5, 2013 9:07 AM
Subject: Re: Price preference
 

On Thursday 05 December 2013 08:41:13 John Ralls wrote:
> On Dec 5, 2013, at 7:52 AM, Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be> wrote:
> > Thanks for the input. The search algorithm is only meant to propose
> > a first exchange rate when the dialog opens. The user is supposed
> > to correct it. I fully agree that only a same day/same direction
> > rate is likely to be correct for all the reasons you mentioned.
> > That rate is not always available in the price database so a next
> > best guess should be proposed.
> > 
> > That guess could have been any price available in the price
> > database.
> > Whoever wrote the algorithm in the first place assumed that nearest
> > in time is a better proposal than last or first or current. And
> > considering bug 630578 which triggered me to look into this, other
> > people seem to prefer nearest in time as next best guess.
> > 
> > But the algorithm prefers same direction of nearest in time. With my
> > test data this is much further off than preferring nearest in time
> > regardless of direction. In the end it will remain a guess in both
> > preferences.
> > 
> > Question is, which guess would most users prefer?
> 
> OK. I'm not surprised that market volatility trumps transaction costs,
> so time proximity should surely take precedence over exchange
> direction.
> 
I asked on irc. The (3 people) consensus there was that it depends a bit on how far off same-
direction and reverse-direction are. To give it *some* quantification the following rule was 
proposed: if reverse-direction is more than a week closer than same-direction, reverse-
direction would be preferred.

> Would it be feasible to offer a selection as we do in the stock-price
> reports like net worth?
> 
I don't think that would be a good approach when posting an invoice. The user is supposed to 
enter the real exchange rate, even if this is not yet in the price db.

This is different from the stock-price reports, which have to come up with an exchange rate to 
use based on what is already in the price db.

> If you want user input, ask on the User list, where there are more
> users.
> 
I'll try that as well.


Geert
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