Budgeting?

[Derek Atkins]

The Doctor What <list.gnucash at docwhat.gerf.org> writes:

> The Include all sub-accounts and "Include sub-accounts to level"
> do-dads that some reports have are an improvement, but they are
> global.  What if someone wants all of Assets, but only Expense (and
> none of Expense's sub-nodes).

I dont know if the GtkCTree Widget (the graphical widget that we use
to implement the account tree) supports this functionality.  Have you
seen any other gnome applications that work this way?

> Graphically, the problem is that the content of the node and the
> folder-ness of the tree are represented in one place.
> 
> It might be better (this is just an idea) to have this instead:
> | Liabilites
> - Expense and Sub-Accounts
>   | Expense
>   + Household
>   + Groceries
>   ... etc.

I think this might be confusing.  Second, it doubles the number of
nodes in your tree (becauase you necessarily need the "Foo and
Sub-Accounts" for each account).  It also can be very confusing
in other ways.

What do you envision seeing if you select the "Expense and
Sub-Accounts" and then expand it?  Would all the sub-accounts be
auto-selected?  (I suppose we could implement a 'row-selected'
callback to do that for certain rows).  Then what would expect to
happen if it remained selected but you de-selected certain
sub-accounts by hand?

> The idea being that on the tree that "Expense" vs. "Expense and
> Sub-Accounts" being two different things are represented by two
> different things.  

But this doubles the number of all accounts with sub-accounts.

> Using single vs. double clicks will allow access to the feature, but
> it won't be obvious, and a user would need to know the "magic"
> combination to do it.  But it would definately be a good solution
> untill a perfect one comes up.
> 
> I may think of alternatives later.  This has been something that has
> irked me about the 'tree' widget for a lot of software.

If you think of more, please send them -- or send them to
gnucash-devel...  Or even file an RFE at bugzilla.gnome.org.

-derek

-- 
       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 at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available