How do I create my own forms

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Ashley Kitson <akitson at bbcb.co.uk> writes:

> Most businesses have their own ways of working fundamentally different
> from others, and in this I can understand the reluctance of the GnuCash
> development community to embroil themselves in creating versions for x
> industry and y industry.

Gnucash's interface just isn't QUITE that extensible.  Many of the UIs
are designed in Glade, so you could change the dialogs by changing the
glade XML file.  However the registers are fairly hard-coded and not
easy to change.  Similarly, the accounting logic is fairly hard-coded
and not easy to change.

> Yet what if end users had the ability to create their own forms with
> simple processing attached.  e.g. Entry of invoice details that takes
> account of various tax charges applicable, customisable by the user. 
> Surely this would go some way to addressing business user's concerns. 
> It (along with other capabilities of course) might also have the benefit
> of attracting a second market concerned with selling GnuCash into
> vertical markets that would a/ expand the acceptance of the product and
> Linux in general and b/ assist in funding the GPL version of the product
> for the stated market of the home user.

By "forms" do you mean input pages?  Or do you mean "reports"?  A
competent end-user can EASILY add new reports to the system.
However, changing what the invoice input screen looks like would be
a LOT more work, and no, gnucash is not really going down that route.

> Nothing I am suggesting hasn't been done before by other product
> developments so I'm sure it can work. Indeed, there are signs that the
> GnuCash effort is moving some way along the path in trying to generalise
> parts of its functionality. I am in part writing this to elicit a
> response from the developers because I can find no reference to it in
> any of the documentation.  And I really do think that GnuCash can do so
> much more.

There is nothing technically incorrect about your suggestions, but
what you're asking for is a 'business accounting framework' which is
probably much better accomplished by GnuE, the Gnu Enterprise
framework.  Gnucash, due to its limited resources, just has no plans
to go down that path at this time.

> My sixpence worth but I'd be interested in the response.
> 
> Kind Regards
> Ashley Kitson

-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