Newbie various

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Michael Hall <ninti at ninti.com> writes:

> GnuCash configuration and data is stored as XML, correct? (I know about the
> Postgres multi-user backend).

It depends on your definition of "configuration".  Some is stored in
Scheme.  Some is stored in Gnome's ini-style database.  Nothing
"user-definable" is stored in XML.

XML is used for the (deprecated) data storage format, for glade, and
for the account hierarchy templates.  Yes, you could drop in a glade
replacement to change the UI, but you're more likely to hurt yourself
that way.

The hierarchy templates are supposed to be "by locale", so making
different files for different locales is recommended.  This probably
does much of what you're asking for.  This is how you would set the
Business account tree to a different set of accounts for different
places.

> Is both configuration and data in the same file? (looks like it)

No, it is not.  The Data File just contain, well, the user's data.
Most configuration data is stored elsewhere.

> I have never touched GUI programming (web only), but am reasonably competent
> with XML/XSLT.

Well, you could start by creating locale-specific .gnucash-xea files
in the accounts/*/ hierarchy in the source tree.

> To what extent could GnuCash be localised just by
> editing/substituting XML files (whether by hand, shell script,
> druid, etc)? For example, to create something as simple as a set of
> default business accounts more attuned to Australian
> circumstances. This could include:
> 
> - remove Americanisms (I'm not anti-American, we just use different names for
> some things)
> - remove lots of irrelevant categories (eg in the taxes section)
> - add GST accounts

Sure, you could do these in the account-hierarchy locale-specific XML
files.  No sweat.

> I suppose I'm volunteering for something along these lines. I'd also
> be interested in finding out what is involved in updating the
> PostgreSQL backend.

This is a more coding-related issue...  We're in the middle of a
re-write/re-work on this, but if you don't know C then it wont help.

-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