RFC: Chapter 8 Tutorial/Guide (depreciation, cap gains)

[Jon Lapham]

Hello all-

Okay, I've finished a first stab at chapter 8 of the tutorial and guide. 
   Yeah, I know I've skipped a few chapters here, but my company needs 
*this* info now... It is not ready for prime time yet, so no patches, 
but I have HTML-ified what I've done so far and put it up on my web 
site.  Please take a look and comments from financial super-geniuses 
would be great.

I would like to say that for most of the text I copied from the gnucash 
v1.6 documentation (which I guess is the documentation cbrowne wrote).
http://www.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-docs-1.6/

Cruise over to:
http://www.jandr.org/temp/gnucashdocs/

=================================
assetloan_concepts1.html

This is the intro to the chapter.  My only question to the list for this 
page is whether you think these 3 subjects belong in the same chapter 
(asset depreciation, asset appreciation, and loans).  It seems to me 
that loans are a different animal?  No?

=================================
asset_dep1.html

This is the section on asset depreciation.  My questions for the list 
here is in section "8.2.3 Handling Depreciation in GnuCash".  This is 
directly copied from the 1.6 documentation, and it mentions that you 
need 3 accounts: "Asset Cost", "Accumulated Depreciation", and a 
"Depreciation Expense" account.  I do not understand what the 
Accumulated Depreciation account does.  It does not appear in the 
example.  Ideas?

Also, if you have multiple assets you want to track, obviously you need 
multiple "Asset Cost" accounts.  But, can they share the same 
depreciation expenses account, or should they each have their own 
depreciation expense accounts?

Compare to:
http://www.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-docs-1.6/xacc-depr.html

=================================
asset_app1.html

This is the section on asset appreciation.  My question is about the 
example given at the end of "8.3.3. Capital Gains in GnuCash: Selling 
the Asset".  It doesn't seem to match any of the 3 possibilities... or 
am I just an idiot?

Compare to:
http://www.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-docs-1.6/xacc-capitalgains.html

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  Jon Lapham  <lapham at extracta.com.br>          Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
  Work: Extracta Moléculas Naturais SA     http://www.extracta.com.br/
  Web: http://www.jandr.org/
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