The Gnucash database?

[Linas Vepstas]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 04:08:21PM -0500, Mark H. Wood was heard to remark:
> On Sat, 24 Jul 2004, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> > "I have this report, I want to import it into gnucash. Why is
> > gnucash so stupid that it can't do this?"
> 
> I'm sorry I discarded the original posting.  This is, in my recollection,
> the first I have heard that the input was to be a report.  I will admit to
> an assumption:  I read "flat file" and thought he had files like these:

...

"same difference".  Its a report with commas in it, and bad indentation.

> which is a set of flat CSV files containing everything needed to express
> three transactions.  Is it not?

well, besides the fact that its unclear what is in which column, 
-- the currency is missing.
-- the transactions were unbalanced. Sure "expenses:gas", but what
   account was this drawn on? bank? credit card? cash?

> I don't see why it is *impossible* to load CSV data into Gnucash.  

Its not impossible, its just that one needs to write a GUI to
describe the data format to gnucash; how to map the various columns 
of this flat file to thier gnucash equivalents.  

What is (more-or-less) impossible is to do this automatically. 
I suppose one could apply all sorts of heuristics to guess which
column applies to which gnucash concept, but without an immense amount
of work, putting together the heuristics so that they did "the right
thing" 99% of the time would be a huge effort.  If it was easy, we
wouldn't need XML :)

> ... the accounting problem ...

The absence of any sort of programming standards for accounting.
For example, 3D graphics has the OpenGL programming API, which
is spec'ed standardized, and overseen by commitee.  Accounting
has nothing like this. 


--linas

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