Business 'fancy date format'

[Geert Janssens]

On Wednesday 09 November 2016 06:50:16 John Ralls wrote:
> > On Nov 9, 2016, at 2:17 AM, Robert Fewell <14ubobit at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > John,
> > 
> > Yes this is master and the reports have been changed. On maint there
> > is an option for 'Fancy Date Format' and the default is what I
> > stated above so your date will be correct.
> > 
> > So to me it looks like the following...
> > 
> > The File/Properties/Business should be showing 'Locale' as the
> > default and remove 'UTC' from the list. (it is not on the list in
> > Preferences/Date) (gnc-default-strftime-date-format) should return
> > a format based on 'Locale' These reports should test for a valid
> > 'Fancy Date Format', if not, use the default one.
> > 
> > If you agree I will add it to my pull request dealing with the
> > report changes.
> Bob,
> 
> Saying that the reports had changed got me to look at history, which
> reminded me that on maint the Fancy Date setting doesn't actually
> work and that Geert fixed it in master last year. I think his idea
> was that the user might want to have reports dated in UTC instead of
> the local time-zone, but I don't remember the reasoning. Perhaps he
> does. Until he chimes in let's leave it on the list.
> 
> Otherwise, yes, test for a setting and use the default if there isn't
> one.
> 
Bob, John,

I don't know who chose to add a UTC option in the fancy date list or what it is supposed to 
mean. It was there when I took up fixing the reports already.

However regarding the failure if no default is set, this is a bug in the option definition 
rather than in the reports.

This option is defined in
https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/blob/master/src/app-utils/business-prefs.scm#L122

One can set a default value for an option, which is currently #f for the dateformat option. I 
believe this default should be whatever we choose as default in the combobox in the gui 
instead. And I certainly think "Locale" would make more sense as default than "UTC".

Regards,

Geert