New Account Dialog

Alex Aycinena alex.aycinena at gmail.com
Fri Sep 1 19:25:26 EDT 2017


Hi to all,

I am responding to this old thread because I had said I would do it and I
am finally getting to it. I am also copying the people who commented to bug
769256. See my comments at the bottom.

On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 9:13 PM, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am now at a real computer keyboard and I have reviewed the current
> documentation on a device with a larger screen.
>
> The Tutorial seems to be far more detailed than I recall from the days
> when I was first learning how to use GnuCash.  That is good.  However, I
> think that new users may find that daunting, and a synopsis has a lot of
> value there.
>
> The other thing that I noticed is that the help manual does not have any
> descriptions of the New Account dialog, the price editor or the security
> editor or the components of each.  I think that these need to be added to
> that manual.
>
> Thanks to all for your efforts in this area.
>
> David C
>
> On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 2:51 AM, David T. via gnucash-devel <
> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org> wrote:
>
>> 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
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > gnucash-devel mailing list
>> > gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>> > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> gnucash-devel mailing list
>> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>>
>
>
I attach three screen shots (with dummy data) for discussion (note: I used
an 'edit account' dialog instead of a 'new account' dialog, without
thinking, but it shouldn't make any difference, it just doesn't have an
opening balance notebook tab):

- current dialog with no changes (for comparison)
- a dialog that has been simply rearranged per the discussion (glade
changes only, no drop down list)
- a dialog that has been rearranged and had account type changed to a drop
down list (glade changes and changes to dialog-account.c)

Note that the tabbing behavior is the same in all three, irrespective of
the rearranging: the cursor starts in
name->code->description->security/currency(if sensitive)->select(if
sensitive)->fraction->color->default->notes
ctrl->hidden->placeholder->account-type->parent->help->cancel->OK->general
notebook tab->back to name.

I'm guessing the original layout was done because it was felt that most new
account adding would be done from the account hierarchy tab with the cursor
on the parent account and therefore the parent and type would not need to
be changed in most cases. So they were put at the end of the dialog to
avoid extra tabs. This of course wouldn't necessarily be true of you set up
a new account from some other place (a register, for example). I think it
would be confusing and a mistake to try to change the tabbing behavior
based on where the dialog was called from. With the modified dialogs, you
would have to back-tab or use the mouse to change the parent and/or type or
circle around.

Comments?

Alex
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