Budgeting - Let's decide what we want!

[Stewart V. Wright]

Hi All,

I've been reading the -users and -devel mailing list to find
information about my particular itch that needs scratching by GnuCash:
Budgeting.

I have had a few ideas about it and after seeing Benoit's "State of
the Project" document I want to help.


I've mentioned on the -devel list that I would like to get a
discussion going here, collect what *we* the users want.  Then
bringing a "this is what we want" discussion over to the -devel list
once a week or so (depending on activity).


The point is to simplify the discussion (and workload) of the
developers by them not having to answer every little query.  Rather
they should be able to say "Proposal 15 is not implementable in the
current code base", or (hopefully) "OK that should be
straightforward".  This does not mean that the code will be
implemented, but if a clear plan of what _is_ to be done, then some of
us newly motivated users can have a clear target to aim at.

The difficulty I see with implementing budgeting is that there doesn't
seem to be a clear idea of what the user base wants to see, and more
importantly, what is possible within the architecture that exists.


There have been some discussions on the -devel list of how budgeting
would be implemented, and lots of "when?" questions on this list, so
I'm guessing we (the user list) could perhaps aid in this development.


I've collected together the postings (as an mbox file) on the -devel
list regarding budgeting at:
  http://www.liv.ac.uk/~svwright/papers/gnucash/

My contribution to a possible framework is also available on that
page.  Please tear it to shreds and come up with something better!
I will post it as text in a follow-up email to this, but there are PS
and PDF versions on the page listed above. [1]

I was planning to tidy it up the -devel discussion a bit, but I've
been busy and sitting on this idea for a week and I want to get
something happening!  :-)


There was a suggestion from Christian Stimming that there might be a
use for putting this sort of information in a wiki page, but I've not
done anything about this yet.

Also Phil Longstaff made a couple suggestions that I have included in
my write up.


So, if budgeting is your desire, please jump in and help.  WE can
contribute to GnuCash and it doesn't involve coding!


Cheers,

S.


[1] Currently the URL does not work.  There is something screwy with
    the connection to Australia at the moment and I can't update my
    pages.  Will be up as soon as the net returns.  Who said the
    internet would be able to route around failed machines???

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