importing a spreadsheet?

[John Lusk]

Hi group,

I've been plinking around w/Gnucash 1.4.10 trying to get my
spreadsheet-based "family budget" thing imported.  Tain't so easy,
'cause the only thing gnucash reads is QIF files.  I actually found
documentation on the Intuit site for the QIF format.  (As a software
engineer, I sure wouldn't want to develop from that spec, but it's the
best I could find.)  I've also looked at the gnucash online help,
which is a bit skimpy for this sort of thing.

So, I exported my spreadsheet into tab-separated columns and wrote a
perl script to suck in records, split 'em on tabs and write QIF-style
records back out.

It actually seems to work, except... my descriptions (memos?) aren't
making it through (and the amounts have the wrong sign, but I think I
can fix that).  So, can someone tell me (a) what I did wrong, and (b)
what I *should* have read to find out more?

Here's a sample transaction (the first one, actually):

!Type:Bank
D06/20/1999
N2124
T7.71
LHongsuk
MWarburton
^

The transaction actually gets imported (to a checking acct of type
BANK), but the description field is blank (I'm expecting
"Warburton").

TIA.

John.