price.date, transaction.post_date and neutral time

[Wm]

On 13/02/2018 12:47, Sébastien de Menten wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 6:32 AM, Wm via gnucash-devel <
> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 12/02/2018 21:00, Sébastien de Menten wrote:
>>
>>> When I enter a new price for a given day for a security on the NASDAQ via
>>> the price editor, it is stored in the date column the UTC time for that
>>> day
>>> at 00:00:00 local time (CET=Europe, not EST=New-York). Which is weird
>>> because across timezone, the day of the price will be interpreted
>>> differently.
>>>
>>
>> Are you entering the prices by hand ?
>>
>> indeed, "via the price editor" (source=user:price-editor in the prices
> table)

OK, I'm not seeing the problem.  Isn't gnc behaving as expected ?

>> But John R says "that's an absolute time anchored in the market's time
>>> zone, not the user's. " which leaves me puzzled as for the example above
>>> on
>>> the NASDAQ it uses European time (i.e.my local time) not NASDAQ time. But
>>> maybe when using the Perl finance quote program, there is a more complete
>>> time information (incl the correct market timezone).
>>>
>>
>> If you are entering the prices yourself then it seems sensible to me the
>> time is when you made the entry rather than the market's time.
>>
>> yes, indeed. John's comment made me doubt ...
> if I use the price editor for today (source=user:price-editor), I get as
> date 2012/02/12 23:00:00 (because I am in UTC+1)
> if I edit a transaction for today on that commodity
> (source=user:xfer-dialog), then I get as date 2012/02/13 10:59:00 (which is

Oh, ffs.  Sebastien are you really entering prices from 5 years ago ???
by hand ???
and wondering about the fucking time ???

I have respect for you.  Please have some respect for yourself and how 
other people regard you.

> the post_date of the transaction which uses GnuCash "neutral time" concept.
> I haven't tried yet via the Finance:Quote as it doesn't install easily
> under my setup (windows, non admin) but I would be curious to see what ends
> up in the date column in this case.

If I look at my raw xml file F::Q gives me
===
<price:time>
       <ts:date>2018-02-09 12:00:00 +0000</ts:date>
</price:time>
===
which is correct, does everyone get something different ?

I say, if you are entering by hand it *should* be the entry time not the 
market time.

>> Also, unless you have a special arrangement with a broker, most people
>> don't get a market price, it will be a bit under or over so the market
>> price is just for reference once you include tx costs, etc.
>>
>> Anyway, my question was to understand the reasons of the encoding of a
>>> day/date as an instant/datetime, reasons that are still a bit obscure
>>> (except legacy issue)
>>>
>>
>> For most purposes it shouldn't matter.  The prices db is independent of
>> the actual transactions, it is used for working out the value of stuff and,
>> as I am sure you are aware, the value of commodities changes every minute
>> and second ... gnc is *never* going to keep up with that sort of price
>> change.
>>
>> In retrospect it may be thought that the design mistake was including a
>> time in the price db at all :)
> 
> 
> That's exaclty my point ;-)

OK, Mr SdM are you saying the point is that there shouldn't be a time at 
all ?

If so I think John said he'll get around to fixing that as and when.  I 
don't see the point in arguing about an hour or two 5 years ago which 
seems to be what you started :(

-- 
Wm