interesting feature suggestions (was: GnuCash vs. Quicken)

[Conrad Canterford]

On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 20:36, David Hampton wrote:
> > > > Shayne Lennox wrote:
> > > > not being able to do an automatic "balance adjustment" in cash accounts,
> This is a reasonable request.  I do this manually all the time for my
> Cash In Hand account.  File a Request For Enhancement in buzgilla. I'm
> sure it will get assigned to me, it always seems to :-), and I'll take
> care of it.

Dammit. Knew I should have put that into Bugzilla as a feature
suggestion months ago. What I was thinking of was a bit more complicated
though (actually, a lot more complicated). What I want is a special
transaction that *forces* the account to have a particular balance at
the specified date, regardless of any subsequent changes that happen
before it. This would mean that I could say "This account had a balance
of $252.59 on 8/12/2002", and it would keep that balance on that date
even if, at some time in the future, I find one of the missing receipts
from before that date and enter it (it would then change its adjustment
amount to keep the balance the same).

> Well, then how do you expect us to produce a solid release if you are
> unwilling to test it?  I have never had a product ship that some user
> hasn't come along and found some set of input that I never dreamed was
> possible.  I have also never tried a new program and not found five to
> ten ways to make it break.  The best way to find bugs in a program is
> for people to use it.  We need your help, because we need a wide variety
> of users trying to do a slew of different things with the program, and
> each person does things his or her own way.  We can't work in a vacuum,
> although we do try very hard.

I'm sure David didn't mean to sound quite so irritated at you personally
(though I could be wrong...  :-)). Tell us what distro and version
you're running, and maybe someone will be able to build you a binary for
you to install. I won't promise (depends on if you're running a
compatible distro to one used by someone running CVS). Either that, or
join the #gnucash channel on irc.gnome.org and someone can talk you
through downloading and building from CVS (depending how much help you
need, of course).

For the record, I too am using CVS gnucash for my real data, and that's
non-trivial. It is very solid, but do remember to save regularly just in
case you do find a spot where it isn't.

Conrad.