understanding currency exchange...

[Mike Alexander]

--On November 16, 2015 at 7:54:05 PM -0800 John Ralls 
<jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

> Ugh. UI design always makes my head hurt.

Me too, that's one reason I spent most of my life writing drivers, 
kernel software, and other stuff without much of a UI.

>
> 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.

I was thinking about a View menu toggle.  I was using the term "option" 
in the generic sense, not as an actual option in the options dialog. 
Having a toolbar button too might be a good idea although the toolbar 
is getting pretty big already.  This really is a lot like the Split 
View choice.

               Mike