[GNC-dev] GnuCash 3 on Linux

[Wm]

On 24/02/2019 02:25, David Cousens wrote:
> Wm,

David, I appreciate your efforts as peacemaker, don't give up on all of 
us yet, most of us are trying to be good, promise :)

> If you draw a diagram from the information in the wiki page
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Configuration_Locations
> where the  meta data and report data is stored becomes fairly obvious and is
> fairly simple.

I disagree, the user doesn't always know where their stuff is and 
therefore can't make a sensible backup.  We (gnc) have a theory about 
where stuff should be but in practice it could be just about anywhere.

My argument is that we should put important stuff near or approximate to 
the data it relates to rather than further away from it.

> There was considerable discussion in the forums at the time the changes were
> being made from 2.6 to 3.0.

Not all views were heard.  Taking a poll and not listening to the views 
that disagree with you is ordinary.

This has ended up with me saying Geert (a person I respect enormously) 
may be a liar :(

> Not all users had the same report startegy you
> were thinking of. Some users used the same report configurations with
> different books. 

That breaks if you have more than one book and those books have more 
than one set of customers (we're all customers of gnc now, right?).

I think what you are saying is a tiny minority of self interested people 
overrode the real interest regarding where reports should be stored 
because it was convenient to them.

If you (or anyone reading this) actually understands how gnc stores 
reports, how it saves them and where it saves them it makes no sense to 
put them in the weird general space that MS and other OS expect them to 
be in.

Yah boo.  Someone further up the chain than you or I believed something 
they were told and forgot about accounting.

> Going with the OS's recommendations has the advantage that
> your backup strategy may be more general than that for a single app.

That means (yes, I am pushing buttons) you agree with the MS view that 
all your data is ours?

> Note it is the report configuration which is saved in the configuration
> locations not the report instance itself - that is in the book/main data
> file 

wrong, the report is not in the book/main data file.

I am stating a fact, DavidC, you may believe it is there but it isn't

and/or reconstructed from the data there when it is displayed.

Nominally, yes.

You are avoiding two important issues:

1. the report configuration file belongs to an account file; do you 
understand this?  you can't apply my Balance Sheet report against your 
file and expect it to work, vice versa your Balance Sheet, we have 
different accounts!  surely this is obvious?

2. the file / book / whatever doesn't know where the reports are, i have 
  very good understanding of the formats involved and I'm telling you 
for free, your accounting data, as stored by gnc at present, has no 
fucking clue where anything else that you consider significant about it 
is stored.

i.e. it is a fucking mess because one of the options available was for 
the file / book to know where it's meta data was.

> It is fairly simple to store a copy of user and configuarion locations
> contents with each data file if you really require the user and config data
> to be backed up along with the data file.

It should be fairly simple but isn't.

gnc has made a presumption about a user.  if you are that user it will 
be OK, if you aren't you're fucked.

David, keep going, please, if you think I'm bad read what I am actually 
saying.

-- 
Wm