[GNC-dev] about these account-summary reports...

Christopher Lam christopher.lck at gmail.com
Mon Jul 23 00:37:23 EDT 2018


I'll be aiming to replace and upgrade the following reports:

  * balance-sheet
  * income-statement
  * account-summary
  * budget-flow
  * cashflow

Basically all of above are using html-acct-table to create a 2D grid 
(vertical = accountlist, horizontal = indented amounts). I think I can 
upgrade to use a cleaner html-multicolumn-acct-table instead.

I will be merging their display/parent-balance-mode and 
display/parent-total-mode options into one. As far as I can see, there 
are only two valid combinations that will produce useful subtotal strategy:

 1. parent-account-balances = "Account balance",
    parent-account-subtotals = "Show subtotals" - this matches my
    'multilevel subtotal strategy (i.e. each parent+children account
    family is followed by the parent+children subtotal)
 2. parent-account-balances = "Subtotal", parent-account-subtotals = "Do
    Not Show" - this matches my 'recursive-bal subtotal strategy (i.e.
    parent amount incorporates whole children amounts, and if parent has
    own amount, display it as a child account on the next line)

The other options are invalid - i.e. Parent-account-balances = 'Do not 
show' will obligatorily lead to amounts missing whereby parent-account 
has an amount. And the Parent-account-subtotal = "Text book-style 
(experimental)" is internally known as 'canonically-tabbed', and the 
code is peppered with comments that "The canonically-tabbed option is 
currently broken."

Any other combination for subtotals will lead to duplication of amounts, 
or missing amounts.

Conclusion:

I will merge these two options into the saner 2-option recursive-bal vs. 
multilevel subtotal strategy. I'll try to maximise compatibility with 
saved reports, as well as set up a transitioning report for users 
wishing to use old reports (with another guid). But after 1 year I think 
it will be wise to remove old code.

Any queries please ask!

C



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