Scope of GNUCash

[Wm]

On 13/02/2018 21:53, Matt Graham wrote:
> 😊 I think I would love to sit down in a pub with the three of you (Wm, Adrien, and Mike). I think we could have such awesome semi-drunken discussions about the nature of life, the universe and everything!

I'm in London. Mike is in a Trump voting bit of Merka. Don't know where 
Adrien is and he shouldn't have to say.

Accounting is a way of measuring life.  Happiness is harder to quantify. 
  Life should be enjoyable and measuring money shouldn't occupy too much 
of our time.

Most crass philosophical sayings are also guaranteed to be crap.

> I think you have basically answered my question, and I think we all basically agree on the rough direction things *should* go in (separate interacting packages).

I'm the person arguing for stuff to be taken *out* of the basic package 
so the important stuff can more easily be better interpreted or used, 
the important stuff being the data that each of us owns or has 
responsibility for.

Meanwhile, since I have a good understanding of accounting and databases 
and related stuff, I just do the bits I need that gnc doesn't cover 
using plain text accounting.  My point in that regard being that almost 
all the *thought* problems have been solved in the plain text accounting 
universe and plain text accounting has also solved some problems you and 
I didn't even know existed and are way more esoteric than a budget being 
to your specific needs or a report being formatted one column to the 
left for the convenience of your tax accountant.

The problems have been solved, it is the presentation you are struggling 
with.

 > I’m just not sure how to help make it happen (I’m an enthusiastic 
amateur when it comes to programming).

The gnc code is almost impenetrable in parts.  I'm considerably above 
average when it comes to programmings skills but there are, when I drill 
down, bits that simply don't parse.  I know exactly what the code is 
meant to be doing but someone has written it in such an obscure way I 
just give up and return to understanding the data.

It is *this* that the seniors are working on rather than adding a bell 
or a whistle.

If the code can't be brought into a form where more than a handful of 
people can understand it the project is going to die with the seniors as 
they naturally retire to caring more for their grandchildren than people 
on the internet thing that demand they do this or that.

You seem like one of the demanding people to me, Matt

> I think I’ll start by updating the budget part of the tuts and concept guide like I have promised elsewhere, and then start looking into how the C++ modules have been structured (to see what connection will be possible within the 3.0 releases).


Ufff, you are welcome to try to understand the budgets but you are 
warned, you aren't the first to think it makes sense to contribute 
there.  You are also unlikely to succeed in explaining the way the 
existing budgets work to anyone's satisfaction, possibly even your own 
satisfaction.  I am not joking, by the time you have figured out how the 
existing budgets work you will already be wondering why they were 
included at all which brings us neatly back to you, Matt, wondering what 
the scope is, remember ?

I don't think you should be defining the scope for other people any more 
than me ... my wishlist is simple and if I don't get what I want I'm not 
going to cry because I can do my accounting in more than one way.

-- 
Wm