About the <trn:currency> tag in the GnuCash file

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

rhill <rhill at raymondhill.net> writes:

> I am trying to understand as best as I can the exact meaning of all the
> fields in the GnuCash file, so I can use the content of the file into an
> (experimental so far) app.
>
> I see that each transaction is set into a specific currency, this can be
> seen through the <trn:currency> XML field. I would like to understand
> why the field has been named "currency" as opposed to "commodity". My
> understanding was that the field *had* to be set to a value which is a
> subset of the commodities set, the "currency" commodities specifically
> (the ones which space is "ISO4217")

Yes, it is supposed to be an actual "common currency", which binds each
of the "Split Values".  The transaction does its double-entry balancing
using the Split Value in the transaction currency.  The exchange-rate
dialog also uses the transaction currency to map from the "Split Amount"
(which is denoted in the Split Account's Commodity) to the Split Value.

> However, looking at a particular file, which contains over 14,000
> transactions, I noticed there are two exceptions: there are two
> transactions (which were entered very recently) where the currency is
> not really an ISO4217 commodity, but are a STOCK commodity. So that kind
> of invalidate my prior understanding, as it appears that the field
> <trn:currency> can refer to any commodity, not just the ones from the
> ISO4217 space.

This is a bug.  How were these transactions created?  You should never
have a transaction with a non-currency "common currency".

> This puzzles me, especially that one of the two transactions has a split
> which describes the movement of an amount in a specific ISO4217 currency
> (I would have expected the <trn:currency> to be set to that currency),
> and I would like for someone to really confirm that indeed, the
> <trn:currency> field can refer to more than just an ISO4217 commodity,
> or whether it is unexpected that it does so in only two transactions out
> of over 14,000 in this particular file.

Indeed.  How were these transactions created?

-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