[GNC-dev] GnuCash 3 on Linux

[Geert Janssens]

Op zondag 24 februari 2019 03:53:52 CET schreef David T. via gnucash-devel:
> While I take exception to Wm's tone and language, I agree with his overall
> assessment of the reports and configuration management.
> 
> 
> Storing configuration data separately from the financial data and on a user
> (as opposed to a book) basis is questionable. 
> 
> Storing saved reports separately from the financial data and on a user basis
> makes no sense at all. A saved report for one file will be meaningless in
> another. This issue has come up many times on the lists. 
> 
Completely agree in today's context. There have been reasons in the past it 
was done as it is. If someone has spare time and epxerience I gladly accept 
patches to fix this technical debt.

> The fact that we even need a wiki page dedicated to file and configuration
> locations-- let alone one as long and convoluted as the one we have (and
> which needs additional diagramming)-- only underscores this problem. 
> 
No, it underscores the dev team's willingness to be as open as possible about 
the complexities of a mature cross-platform application. Many applications 
store (meta)data is locations defined by the context. Go search for 
libreoffice's metadata for example, or firefox'. If you would want to document 
their metadata structures, you'd see something similar or even more complex.
Part of the complexity comes from the multi-platform nature of gnucash. Each 
platform defines their own default locations for various kinds of data. And 
gnucash tries to apply these per platform.

> I want to be clear that I am truly grateful that Chris has decided to work
> on reports, and I have great respect for his ability to work with Scheme.
> I've yet to succeed in either editing an existing report or getting a third
> party report installed on my Mac. 13 years of futility on that front!

Yes, unfortunately this isn't very user friendly. I'm sure it can be improved. 
Again it requires someone with time available and coding experience to 
implement it.

Regards,

Geert