Deposit Slip

[Paul Lussier]

>>> On Sat, 6 Oct 2001, David Raleigh Arnold, identified below as
>>> "David", spake forth:

  David> I saw your screen shots.  You have no deposit slip.  You
  David> should have a deposit slip

  David> Your program is useless for many people without it.


It's also quite useful for many more as it is!  If you don't like 
either dig into the code and do something about it, or contribute 
your criticism in a constructive manner.  Either way, regardless of 
your frustration level, you have no right to lob incindiary remarks
at the developers of completely VOLUNTARY effort.  Your remarks are 
what is useless.  Please take your anger and frustration elsewhere.

  David> The reason you don't have it is because you slavishly imitate
  David>  the commercial checkbook programs, which don't have it because
  David> the publishers think they don't have to have it.  Thus you
  David> imitate them in dishing out what *they* say users should
  David> want.

Do you know anything at all about the history of GnuCash?  Have you 
ever bothered to read any of the documentation or any of the 
information provided at the GnuCash site and the several others 
related to and linked from it which discuss it's history and 
evolvement?  I believe you haven't based on the complete ignorance of 
your remarks.  If GnuCash were a mere imitation of commercial 
financial applications, then we wouldn't have a 
true double-entry system instead of categories; a structured 
XML-based, ascii-text file-format instead of a proprietary, binary 
file-format, or bug-ridden, pathetic excuse for portability called 
QIF; and most of all, we wouldn't have the SOURCE CODE to said 
"useless" program.

Now, these may not seem all that important to you, and you may not 
give a "rat's ass" about them, but the vast majority of GnuCash users 
do in fact care about these very things, and we care about them a 
whole lot more than we care about a "deposit slip"!


  David> If you had a deposit slip, which searches the previous
  David> entries of course, you would quickly get serious numbers of
  David> new users, because they would drop the likes of Quicken like
  David> a hot rock.

Well, personally, I don't care whether people drop Quicken like a hot 
rock or a cold grain of sand.  If they like it and it works for them, 
let them use it.  I care much more about careful, well thought out 
design and implementation and development process I can take part in 
and contribute to, and I don't care one whit about a deposit slip, 
either!

  David> For me any I think many others, that would be the
  David> main user interface.  I don't care a rat's ass how much it
  David> looks like a checkbook register.

Now there's an incentive for the developers here to drop what they're 
doing and quickly start coding up a deposit slip interface.  A more 
compelling reason I haven't heard!

  David> Just a bit frustrated.  It seems like every developer in
  David> the world thinks that every time someone gets a check for
  David> $20.00 or ten bucks cash he runs to the computer and enters
  David> it.  That's not what happens in my world, and while I may be
  David> unusual, I am not rare.

And what's wrong with entering them as splits into the register?  
Works just find for me, and I don't even need a pretty looking GUI 
interface to do it either!  As a matter of fact, I don't even have to 
run to my computer to deal with it, since I just use an old-fashioned 
pen and paper deposit slip to deposit my checks with when I go to 
bank, then once a month (if I'm feeling especially pro-active) I 
enter all the data for the previous statement period into GnuCash.
Deposit slip? We don't need no stinkin' deposit slip!

  David> I wrote something in *qbasic* that does it

So port it into guile/scheme and contribute it back to make GnuCash 
what *you* want it be instead of being a grumpy old curmudgeon 
sitting on the sidelines angry at the world because you're not being 
catered to.

-- 

Seeya,
Paul
----

			  God Bless America!

	...we don't need to be perfect to be the best around,
		and we never stop trying to be better. 
		       Tom Clancy, The Bear and The Dragon