[GNC-dev] some proposals to improve the dialog "Get Transaction ..."

[Di Mang]

Hi all,

while testing the functionality for online banking, I have found a few
places that I think can be improved. See corresponding discussion on
gnucash-de mailing list:
https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-de/2018-July/010419.html


== (A) handling invalid date range in "get transaction..." ==

The GnuCash attempts to get the transactions from the online bank even
though the date range entered is incorrect.

Examples for incorrect user inputs:
1) "to"-date is smaller than "from"-date
2) "to"-date is in the future

In both cases GnuCash tries to get a connection to the online bank. It
takes a while.
After that GnuCash shows an error message: "Error on executing job. Status:
error - job contains errors". The error message is very general and does
not say what is wrong.

It would be better to check the user inputs *before* the request will be
send to
the bank, and to show a error message if the entered date range is wrong,
*without* creating the connection to the online bank.

examples error messages for invalid user data:
for (1): The date range is wrong. "To"-date cann't be smaller than the
"from"-date.
for (2): The date range is wrong. "To"-date cann't be in the future.



== (B) show additionally *booking date* in "List of downloaded
transactions" ==

If I try to get the transactions from my online bank only for the day
2018-07-16 (date range: 07/16/2018 - 07/16/2018) I see the following
transactions in window "List of downloaded transations":

Date         Account Amount     Description ...
07/14/2018    xxxx    xxx    xxx
07/16/2018    xxxx    xxx    xxx
07/16/2018    xxxx    xxx    xxx
07/17/2018    xxxx    xxx    xxx

At first time I was wondering, why I got the transactions for the days out
of the entered date range. After a reconciliation with a csv export from my
bank I founded, that all these transactions have a booking date
"2018-07-16":

Booking Date     Value Date    Account Amount     Description ...
2018-07-16     2018-07-14    xxxx    xxx    xxx
2018-07-16    2018-07-16    xxxx    xxx    xxx
2018-07-16    2018-07-16     xxxx    xxx    xxx
2018-07-16    2018-07-17     xxxx    xxx    xxx

GnuCash and AqBanking request the transations with the "booking date",
but show it only with "value date" in "list of downloaded transactions" or
in a "account register".

This behavior can confuse some users. For me, it was also initially not
clear why GnuCash gets transactions outside the requested date range.

Would it be possible to add "booking date" field additionaly to the list of
downloaded transactions? Or as an option in GnuCash Preferences?



== (C) size of "Certificate Received" window ==

The GnuCash shows a window with the certificate when I start retrieving the
transactions from the bank. In this window are displayed the different
properties of the certificate. Among other things also SHA512 hash. It
takes up a lot of space on the window. The window has a size of 1231 x 321
px and cann't be resized.

Would it be possible to redesign this GUI element, so that it get an area
with a horizontal scroll bar?



For more details see images in attachment.

What do you think about this points? Any other ideas, how we can imporove
it?
Should I create bug reports for A, B and C?

Thanks,
dimang
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