understanding currency exchange...

[John Ralls]

> On Nov 16, 2015, at 4:52 PM, Mike Alexander <mta at umich.edu> wrote:
> 
> --On November 14, 2015 at 12:37:04 PM -0800 John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
> 
>> Let’s at least make the non-trading account view look like the
>> trading account view with each split amount. That will help some with
>> the confusion.
> 
> You mean always show the amount instead of the value?  I thought about doing that when I implemented trading accounts but didn't since one of my design criteria was to change the behavior of GnuCash when trading accounts were turned off as little as possible.  I changed the display with trading accounts on since I though it was very confusing otherwise.  Changing it to always show the amount instead of value would be a good idea, I think.

Yes, that’s exactly what I mean, and the user confusion level is high enough that I’d consider doing it for maint.
> 
>> I don’t think it makes sense to show the value without also showing
>> the price. I think ideally we’d switch split-view to the layout in
>> STOCK accounts any time there’s more than one commodity involved in
>> a transaction in ledger view any time there’s a visible transaction
>> with multiple commodities).
> 
> Having a way to use the stock account layout for any register sounds like a great idea.  However doing it based on what's visible may not be the best way.  If I understand what you're suggesting then scrolling around in a register would make the extra columns appear and disappear depending on what is currently visible.  This would be disconcerting.
> 
> You could base the decision on whether there is a transaction anywhere in the register that uses two or more commodities, but then one multi-currency transaction way in the past would change the register layout forever, which isn't too good either.
> 
> How about just making it an option for the register?  We could an a command to the View menu, View->Show Value and Price, (assuming amount is always shown).   The default would be based on the current behavior. This would seem to give us the most flexible solution.  It would also make the exchange rate dialog less important, which wouldn't be a bad idea.
> 
Ugh. UI design always makes my head hurt.

My original thought was that any multi-commodity transaction in the current working set (we’re talking about master here, and the goal is to retrieve from the database only the most recent n transactions where n is some multiple of the number that would be visible. You’re right that scrolling could move a multi-currency transaction in and out of the working set and that the view changes would be a bit disconcerting.

Making it an explicit option would indeed fix the view-switching problem but might make the user experience a bit confusing: If “show value & price” is set then the user doesn’t get the transfer dialog, but if it isn’t she does. We could do the view switch on clicking the split button for a multi-currency txn, but then the creation use-case will still have that disconcerting “pop” when the user selects an account with a different commodity.

I guess making it a user selection is the least evil. Rather than an option I think it needs a toggle, at least in the View menu and maybe a toolbar button like Split View.

Regards,
John Ralls