Budgeting prototype

[Darin Willits]

Ok, I finally got some screen shots put together for my ideas on the
budgeting interface in gnucash.  They are really rough but give you an
idea of the direction I would like to head.  You can find them here:

http://www.darin.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

They don't really show any new ideas which haven't already been covered
in the discussion so far but I find that laying things out in a (semi)
concrete way often helps me focus and refine my ideas.  

Although I personally prefer the workbench style approach there might be
a better way to tackle this.  I personally think that separating the UI
(as well as the data) would make for a better user experience.  I agree
with the sentiment that budgets and account trees should be separate
entities.  One *is* an essentially imaginary, pie in the sky concept
while the other is concrete (often depressing...) reality.  They are
definitely linked (categories have related accounts) but are not one and
the same.

However my hope is to create a set of data which could be used in other
parts of the application hopefully enabling a wealth of financial
planning features down the road.  But for now we have to start
somewhere.

I am hoping to flesh out some ideas for the data structures over the
next couple days and then get to the business of spewing out code.  I
don't know how far I will be able to get in the next few weeks but I am
hoping at the very least to get some sort of foundation in place.  After
that I will be back to part time work on this as I will be moving house
across the ocean and doing some hard core job hunting!

Thoughts/criticisms/concerns are as always welcome. :)

Cheers,

Darin