[GNC-dev] Dev's features of choice?

[John Ralls]

Because while GnuCash lacks the controls and some modules (c.f. the recent request for cost accounting; we also get frequent questions about whether we support payroll, inventory control, and POS for retail) required by many businesses, it is double-entry and designed for users who want a formal accounting app. If you're more interested in a Quicken work-alike try KMyMoney.

That said I don't agree with Frank that transactions should be immutable, though we have a preference that can get you pretty close to that if you want. The real difficulty with bulk edit is GnuCash's edit-commit structure that as you recently discovered in imports makes bulk modification rather slow. Changing it without breaking a lot of other things would be difficult. There are also accounting controls issues: Remember that you punted on enforcing same-commodity on bulk moves of transactions in sub-accounts when deleting the parent account because of the spiraling complexity.

Undo/Redo is maybe another matter. The simplest form would keep a stack of changes to the Gtk controls while some element--a transaction in the register, a business object, or a dialog box--is between being open and committed. Implementing that would be mostly tedious. Being able to undo already committed changes would require a good deal more care and perhaps some changes to the edit-commit behavior in the backend.

Regards,
John Ralls


> On Jul 26, 2020, at 4:50 PM, jean laroche <ripngo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> But why???
> 
> 
> On 7/26/2020 3:38 PM, D. wrote:
>> Jean,
>> 
>> I think you raise a valid point. There does seem to be a tendency in the community to assume that a certain amount of inconvenience is to be expected. The reasons vary, but the underlying tendency remains.
>> 
>> David T.
>> 
>> 
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> From: jean laroche <ripngo at gmail.com>
>> Sent: Sun Jul 26 17:49:47 EDT 2020
>> To: "Frank H. Ellenberger" <frank.h.ellenberger at gmail.com>
>> Cc: GnuCash Developer <gnucash-devel at gnucash.org>
>> Subject: Re: [GNC-dev] Dev's features of choice?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 7/26/2020 1:54 PM, Frank H. Ellenberger wrote:
>>> Hi Jean,
>>> 
>>> Am 26.07.20 um 19:57 schrieb jean laroche:
>>>> I'm curious about something:
>>>> If you're a GC dev, contributing code to the project, what's the
>>>> feature(s) you'd like to see added to GC?
>>>> I'm only contributing a bit, but I'll offer my 3 top wishes:
>>>> - Undo/(redo)
>>>> - Multi-transaction (bulk) editing
>>>> - Multi-account (bulk) editing
>>> All three are violations of strict accounting rules. We often talk about
>>> "In the times of ink and paper", not graphite (pencils). Some
>>> governments require the immutabiity of once written records.
>> I see a disconnect here. Some of us (John in particular) insist that GC
>> is not a system for professionals, only for personal finance.
>> Yet, I always hear about accounting rules, and the way it should be done
>> by the book. If GC is really for the personal user, I don't understand
>> how we can survive without undo/redo, and multi-select. *every* piece of
>> software out there has these types of features, and they're invaluable.
>> J.
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> 
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