New Account Dialog

[David T.]

I have put this into a bug: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=769256 <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=769256>

> On Jul 28, 2016, at 5:25 AM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Jul 27, 2016, at 10:01 AM, Alex Aycinena <alex.aycinena at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On Wed, Jul 27, 2016 at 9:00 AM, <gnucash-devel-request at gnucash.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> From: "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>
>>> To: GnuCash-Devel <gnucash-devel at gnucash.org>
>>> Cc:
>>> Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2016 11:25:11 +0500
>>> Subject: New Account Dialog
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> In recent weeks, there have been a number of threads on the user list in
>>> which users have had difficulties setting up accounts for equities and
>>> mutual funds. These users have not been able to set the Security/Currency
>>> to an appropriate value because the account type was not correctly set.
>>> 
>>> I believe that the New Account dialog contributes to this problem by the
>>> way it is set up. The sequence of fields in the dialog does not match the
>>> required sequence of input; the user must correctly set the Account Type
>>> field (located at the bottom of the dialog) *BEFORE* they can correctly set
>>> the Security/currency field.
>>> 
>>> Not only is this sequence confusing to new users, it is an annoyance for
>>> experienced users as well, since the user must manually relocate to the
>>> type field, set the type, and then manually relocate back to the currency
>>> field to set it. This quickly gets burdensome.
>>> 
>>> At the very least, I would suggest that it would be much clearer and
>>> easier to all users to have the Account Type field placed immediately after
>>> the Description field, and that it be changed to a drop down list. This
>>> would make it clearer to new users and more efficient for others, without
>>> entailing a great deal of change to the program.
>>> 
>>> I can add a bug to bugzilla if it seems that this would be useful.
>>> 
>>> David
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> David,
>>> 
>>> I think that that's quite well explained in Chapter 8 of the guide, and
>>> the new user's problems are largely down to not reading the documentation
>>> before diving in.
>>> 
>>> I agree with to your proposed change to the UI for 2.8, and it should be
>>> as you say fairly simple, probably only a Glade change with no code. Please
>>> do file a bug so that we remember to do it.
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> John Ralls
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I am currently doing some work that will change the Account dialog for
>> other reasons. If everyone is in agreement, I can change the layout as
>> David suggests in the course of that work. I would probably commit that to
>> master in a few weeks.
> 
> Alex,
> 
> That would be great, thanks!
> 
> Regards,
> John Ralls
> 
> 
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