GnuCash XML sched-xaction split amount formatting

Ngewi Fet ngewif at gmail.com
Wed Apr 29 09:03:22 EDT 2015


Hi Geert,
Thanks for that info. That puts us in a tight spot. Now GncA could either:
- skip scheduled transactions completely (not desirable)
- parse the wrong amount and let the user edit it later (I am less inclined
to do this) or
- fail the import completely (which is what happens now and will make the
import feature less-than-useful for many) .

One solution that comes to mind though, if I could reliably know how many
decimal places are included in the amount, then I can parse it irrespective
of the separator.
Does GnuCash always use 2 decimal places, or does this depend on the
currency, or something else?

But then that also leaves the issue of GnuCash choking on XML files
exported by GncA because we cannot predict what locale the user will be
using.
Best guess will be to use the mobile device locale and hope that the user
has the same setting on the desktop!

Regards,
Ngewi F.

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 12:42 PM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be
> wrote:

>  On Wednesday 29 April 2015 11:35:42 Ngewi Fet wrote:
>
> > Hello,
>
> > In GnuCash XML, scheduled transaction splits do not have the
>
> > <split:value/> and <split:quantities/> set. Rather the amount is
>
> > stored as a slot with key <sched-xaction>.
>
> >
>
> > I would like to know if the formatting of this amount is (device or
>
> > gnucash) locale-specific, or uniform across all GnuCash instances.
>
> >
>
> > For me, it is formatted as , e.g. 200,00 or 2.500,00
>
> > Note the comma for decimal separator and period for thousands
>
> > separator (which would be correct for my device locale but incorrect
>
> > for my GnuCash locale which is en_US).
>
> > The formatting doesn't seem to change when I modify the GnuCash
>
> > locale.
>
> >
>
> > Can anyone shed some light on the formatting of the split amounts of
>
> > scheduled transactions?
>
> > It would help when parsing GnuCash XML files in GnuCash Android.
>
> > Thanks.
>
> >
>
> > Regards,
>
> > Ngewi F.
>
> > _______________________________________________
>
> > gnucash-devel mailing list
>
> > gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>
> > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>
>
>
> Hi Ngewi,
>
>
>
> Unfortunately you hit one of GnuCash's dark corners here. The SX amount
> formula is stored in gnucash in the locale that is active at that time.
> This has been a poor design decision (more like on oversight probably) at
> the time.
>
>
>
> It gets worse if you change locales afterwards because gnucash doesn't
> store the locale information itself with the formula and hence can't
> convert the stored formulas to the new locale, resulting in errors when
> these formulas have to be parsed.
>
>
>
> This has been reported as a bug [1] which hasn't been fixed yet so far.
>
>
>
> I'm not sure what you can do on the gnucash-on-android side to properly
> handle this if gnucash itself even doesn't.
>
>
>
> Geert
>
>
>
> [1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=370331
>


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