FreeCoins and gnuCash revisited

[Neil Williams]

On Wednesday 01 September 2004 6:10, David J Patrick wrote:
> FreeCoins is a full-featured accounting program (similar to GnuCash) for
> the Palm OS released under GPL. It has been discussed here on several
> occasions and I would like to suggest that it get another look.

I'm more than willing to take a look - I did send an email about FreeCoins 
some weeks ago - about using it with QOF - Query Object Framework. That could 
utilise XML as a data exchange format.

> Although it has not seen much development, recently, it is usable and
> stable. Considerable effort has gone into exporting FreeCoins data to
> QIF and GnuCash files, although the implimentation could use some
> smoothing.

QIF (IIRC) won't/doesn't work well with business objects, if FreeCoins can 
talk to a conduit (e.g. in pilot-link) or directly in XML, it could generate 
suitable files for GnuCash to merge as QofBook structures. This is what 
originally started my work in developing a merge process for QofBook - being 
able to abstract an invoice directly from Expenses, Calendar and Contacts in 
the Palm. If FreeCoins can help, I'll take a look.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to create and edit an invoice on the Palm using 
FreeCoins and then download the invoice as XML, ready for merge into GnuCash. 
If there's an easier way, I'm all ears.

> Past efforts to fully integrate gnuCash and FreeCoins have seemingly
> stalled, but things change and technologies develop and sometimes
> revisiting an old idea can lead to a new solutions.

If FreeCoins can be made to interact directly with the main GnuCash engine 
using QOF instead of via QIF, it would achieve full integration. 

> I don't expect the of GnuCash developers to leap forward, as a result of
> this post, but I would be thrilled if they (you) formally recognise what
> a boon such a system would be, to many gnuCash users, 

As with a lot of development, I'm being selfish here - I want to link GnuCash 
with my Palm and I'm willing to look at solutions that allow full 
interaction,

> and to officially 
> add the project to the list of future improvements.
> Thanks for considering it,
> djp

I'd like to offer any help I can to get this working - if it's not suitable as 
a part of GnuCash itself, I don't mind getting into the pilot-link code and 
building a QofBook as a backend to the HotSync. Then FreeCoins would simply 
be interrogated by the pilot-link conduit code, provide the data to build the 
QofBook on the computer and write out a suitable XML file for merge.

The merge code still needs work as far as business objects go, but it does 
work for simple QofBook's.

http://www.codehelp.co.uk/code/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qof

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
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http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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