QIF syntax question

Linas Vepstas linas@linas.org
Tue, 9 Oct 2001 12:15:02 -0500


Hi,

On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 10:35:15AM -0400, Paul Lussier was heard to remark:
> 
> I thought about that, however, I enter almost everything as a split 
> transaction.  I find this to problematic in a GUI environment 
> (doesn't matter whether it's GnuCash or Quicken) is that in order to 
> go from field to field you end up hitting tab several times, or using 
> the mouse to point'n'click.  For account entry, you either need to 
> point'n'click to get the drop down box and find the right account, or 
> type the same long strings over and over (e.g. For Expenses:Food:Beer 
> I have to at least type Ex Fo Be every time).
> 
> By setting things up in Emacs, I can do things like create 
> abbreviations like 'beer' which auto-expands to Expenses:Food:Beer.
> Auto-fill for payees also gets more problematic when you have payee 
> names which are not unique for X number of characters, thereby 
> requiring that you type X number of characters.  For example,
> if I frequent 2 home-brew supply stores, "The Beer And Brew Master"
> and "The Beer And Wine Supply Store", I have to at least type in "The 
> Beer And X" each time, whereas whith emacs, I need just type in 
> "beer" for one and "wine" for the other.

Myabe we need to update the matching algorithms to match any substring,
and not just the string starting at the begining.  I see nothing wrong
with doing that ... We'll need a fancier indexing scheme ...

> Additionally, creating multiple duplicate transactions which differ 
> only in date, check number, or some other minor feature is simply a 
> matter of cut'n'paste, or, for *really* frequent transactions, 
> mapping the entire list of key strokes to a one key-shortcut then 
> changing the one field which needs to be updated.

Well, maybe we should fix cut & paste to work on whole transactions,
rather than on individual cells.   

--linas

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