Unintended consequences / retrograde behaviour re 2.6.16 fix of Bug 603379 - Prevent changing some Account Options if it has transactions.

[Robert Fewell]

I have been watching this and can look at it again when a clear outcome of
this discussion is made and hopefully the bug can be updated with what is
required.

Bob

On 3 May 2017 at 11:44, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:

> On woensdag 3 mei 2017 10:02:44 CEST Geert Janssens wrote:
> > >> On May 2, 2017, at 5:11 PM, Wm via gnucash-devel
> > >> <gnucash-devel at gnucash.org> wrote:
> > > Derek, Geert, and I discussion about this on IRC the other day and both
> > > disagree with me. I think Geert is looking into how to restore the
> > > account type selector and block type changes between STOCK/FUND and
> > > everything else.
> >
> > I believe you are correct accounts are immutable in formal accounting. In
> > formal accounting transactions are immutable as well. Yet we allow users
> to
> > change transactions if they choose not to adhere to formal accounting
> rules.
> > In that sense I believe we can also allow users to do the same with
> > accounts if they choose to do so, at least within reasonable limits.
> > These limits are:
> > - the commodity shouldn't be changed. It wouldn't make sense that an
> account
> > that was tracking USD suddenly starts tracking EUR. The values wouldn't
> > match consistently.
> > - GnuCash makes certain assumptions about Accounts Receivable and
> Accounts
> > Payable account types and stores more information in those internally
> than
> > in other account types. Changing types on these accounts would violate
> > these assumptions and/or would lose the added information. To avoid these
> > changing account types to/from A/R and A/P should not be allowed.
> > - John also mentions the Trading account type. While it's an internal use
> > type as well I don't know much about the assumptions gnucash makes on
> these
> > account types nor whether changing an account to/from such a type would
> > affect gnucash' proper functioning or not. Nor can I imagine a use case
> > where it would make sense to change to/from a trading account. They are
> > generated automatically when needed.
>
> Oh, and I meant to add I'm not working on this issue (yet). As Robert
> Fewell
> is the original author of the previous patch I was kind of hoping he would
> pick it up :)
>
> If not, I will handle it.
>
> Regards,
>
> Geert
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