Split Transactions

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

> In my case, I've asked several pretty simple, but allusive, operational 
> questions and finally received one answer from someone who took pity on 
> me.  But no other help has been forthcoming.  I've asked my webmaster to 
> remove me from this list.

Have you?  Looking back through the archives back through June I can
find only two question, which you asked on June 28 and November 18.
I personally responded to your question in June (and I don't even READ
this mailing list!!!)

Your most recent question read:

> Greetings,
> I am having a hard time clearing Splits.  Can someone please advise?

Admittedly, nobody responded to you, and here I am, again, answering
it even though I don't read gnucash-user.

Frankly, this question is VERY hard to answer.  I have no idea from
reading this question what you are trying to do, so I have no idea
what kind of advice to even attempt to give you.

Are you trying to remove a split from a transaction?  If so, have you
tried going into expanded mode (click on the Split button), clicking
on the split you want to remove, and clicking the 'delete' button?

Or are you trying to clear a particular field from a split?  Have you
tried using the "delete" key on your keyboard while in the particular
cell you want to clear?  Or perhaps "selecting" the text you want to
clear and using the Edit->Cut menu item?

Or do you mean that you want to mark a Split as "cleared" in the
register?  You can use the reconcile window to do this.

What exactly do you mean by "clearing Splits"?  I don't know.  Perhaps
if your question included a "what", "where", and "how" ...

        what: what are you trying to do?   E.g., "I am trying to
              clear out the splits in a transaction so that I
              can change the descriptions and values, but leave
              the primary split intact"

        where: where in the program are you?   "I am in the register,
              with a 'Bank' account.  It's a 'Basic Register' and
              the Splits are expanded.

        how: how is it failing?   "When I try to do XXX it does YYY
              and I don't understand, because I thought it should do
              ZZZ".

The more detail you can put into your question, the easier it is
for people to answer you.

As for your assertion about lack-of-help...  Well, I answered you LAST
time you asked a question.....  And frankly I have a full-time job as
a consultant.  In fact, right now it's MORE than a full-time job (I've
got 3 clients concurrent).  None of these clients is paying to work on
Gnucash.  When I'm not working on real work I am working hard at the
business features on Gnucash, and tracking down bugs, and helping
people on #gnucash, and answering email (admittedly to gnucash-devel,
not gnucash-user).  It's probably a good 2 to 2-1/2 jobs worth of work
that I'm doing...

I wrote the business accounting side because I want to use it for my
consulting company, and frankly nothing else out there was "good
enough" for me.  SQL-Ledger requires a web server, Timetracker didn't
have the accounting side, and QuickBooks cost $500!  So, I spent the
better part of the last year of my life trying to write something that
I thought would be better than anything else out there available FOR
FREE.

Frankly, my work on Gnucash is practically a full-time job, and an
_unpaid_ full-time job at that.  Most days I get up around 9am and am
on the computer until about 1 or 2am.  My wife is livid at me at
times.  But in the end, I am still just a _volunteer_.  Listen, how
about this: if you don't like the service I'm giving you, I'll give
you triple your money back!  Seriously.  I guarantee that if you do
not like my services I will pay you TRIPLE the amount of money you pay
me for my services.

I'm very sorry that you feel there is nobody here to help you.  That
is FAR from true.. There are a LOT of people here to help.  But we are
all volunteers.  Nobody is paid to help users (or indeed paid to work
on gnucash).  We all do it in our spare time, when we can, because we
like to do this, and we think that gnucash is THE BEST product out
there.

We try hard.  We really do.  It's not arrogance; it's lack of time.
But because it's a volunteer effort, some things fall through the
cracks.  I'm sorry your questions did, but it sometimes happens.
We've set up bugzilla to track bugs, and indeed that has helped
IMMENSELY in making sure that problems have not been forgotten.
Unfortunately user help is something that tends to be even lower on
the developers lists of things-to-do than almost anything else.
Perhaps this is a flaw of free software?

In the end, I don't have the time to be first line tech support for
Gnucash.  It literally is a full time job, and right now I've already
got more than two (my real job, and my role as gnucash-developer).  If
someone is willing to pay me my consulting rate (which is $200/hr) to
play tech-support I'm more than happy to do so once my other contracts
have finished.

As a community, we developers tend to depend on other users to act as
the first-line tech support.  Perhaps we need an FAQ.  Are YOU willing
to write and maintain it?  If not, why not?  Put YOUR money where your
mouth is.  There are archives of gnucash-user back to July 2000, and
gnucash-devel back to October 1998..  The answers are all there
waiting for someone to build into an FAQ.  Why don't you help the
community and put it together?

Good Luck, with whatever you choose to do,

-derek, Gnucash Developer

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord@MIT.EDU                        PGP key available