Giving up on Gnucash

[Andrew Sackville-West]

Rod,

I'm very sad to see the personal attacks leveled at you by the list.

FWIW, I have read and respect your opinions on GNC. They are different 
from mine and I personally think that's great. That's the whole point. I 
was really pleased to open my mailbox today and see something like 40 
replies to the original post. This kind of conversation is fantastic. I 
love it. It gives us all a chance to talk about where we want this thing 
to go, what we like and don't like about it. Debate is good. Good debate 
and conversation leads ultimately to consensus and a plan to go forward. 
It gives the developers and opportunity to understand what the users are 
looking for. The positives are HUGE! Its unfortunate that it has 
degraded so quickly to people throwing accusations at each other.

So. I sincerely wish you the best of luck. I say, check back a year from 
now and see what's happening...

regards

Andrew

Rod Engelsman wrote:
> Bob W. Anderson wrote:
> 
>>> And I know I sounded like an ungrateful ***hole, that wasn't really 
>>> my intent. I really *do* appreciate all the hard, unpaid, labor 
>>> that's gone into this program. It's just not what I was looking for.
>>
>>
>>
>> Rod, this is a private reply. 
> 
> 
> And this is a public reply.
> 
>    You didn't sound like and "ungrateful
> 
>> ***hole",
>> you came across as a petulant child not getting what it wants.   Just my
>> opinion.
>> If the feedback (not asked for) is not welcomed, please delete it.
>>
>> Bob in Newport
>>
>>
> 
> "Petulant child". That's nice. So if you try a program and it doesn't 
> fill your needs, then you should just shut up and like it anyway?
> 
> I tried it. I gave it an honest run -- three months -- to eliminate the 
> unfamiliarity factor, and have concluded that it's not for me.
> 
> When I import downloaded transactions from my bank, the matcher does a 
> terrible job. I always have to go back through and delete dups from 
> stuff I put in by hand. It insists that I assign balancing accounts to 
> checks, but doesn't tell you the check number, so I have to flip through 
> the checkbook looking at amounts to match them up. And it doesn't allow 
> you to split those transactions on import either, requiring yet more 
> manual processing. All-in-all, it takes at least twice as long as it 
> used to with MSMoney.
> 
> The arrangements of the checks and deposits columns is exactly opposite 
> of other programs, as well as the paper checkbook register supplied by 
> banks. After thirty years of seeing it one way, why should I force 
> myself to see it the other? Small thing? Maybe, but it's caused me to 
> make mistakes, particularly when entering split transactions.
> 
> I have yet to figure out how to make the tax report thing work right. It 
> always gives me errors and the help file doesn't match the program, so I 
> can't determine what I'm doing wrong, or if it's simply broken. I didn't 
> get much help from this list, either. Apparently either nobody else uses 
> it or nobody else can get it to work right, either.
> 
> My loan druid is completely hosed for some obscure reason that the 
> developers can't figure out. Both the stock installation that came with 
> the FC3 distro and the 1.8.11 upgrade both have this problem. It's 
> simply broken.
> 
> On a related note, loan accounts are treated as simple liability 
> accounts. The problem? MSMoney has a feature where you make a payment to 
> a loan account and it automatically determines the interest/principal 
> split. Granted that won't generally match up exactly with what the 
> lender says, but it's very useful for private loans that you want to 
> keep track of. And I have that exact situation to deal with, requiring 
> me to keep track of that via a spreadsheet and transfer the numbers over 
> every time. Cumbersome.
> 
> I'm of mixed opinion regarding expense and income accounts vs. the 
> category paradigm of other programs. Generally, I think categories are 
> more intuitive, since I've always thought of an account as being 
> something that someone else has a record of in addition to myself. So 
> bank accounts, loans, credit cards, etc. would qualify, but groceries 
> wouldn't. On the other hand, it's handy being able to look at an income 
> account that way. I also like being able to have several open and 
> visible at the same time.
> 
> Also, on a positive note, I like the flexibility of the account tree 
> compared to the two-level hierarchy of categories you get in other 
> programs. That's a definite superiority.
> 
> So I have very specific issues: I find the interface un-intuitive and 
> confusing, YMMV. Some things are more cumbersome to accomplish, while 
> other things are simply broken or missing entirely.
> 
> Frankly, I grow weary of the open-source attitude that you can't 
> complain or criticize. In the end it doesn't matter much how little 
> something costs or whether it's being produced in someone's spare time. 
> If it's broken and doesn't do what you want, it's still useless. Well... 
> I wouldn't call Gnucash useless, but it is certainly less useful than 
> other products I've tried. Literally, if a useful function is missing or 
> doesn't work right, then it is by definition, less useful. If it's 
> wholly inadequate to the task, then it's useless.
> 
> Rod
> 
> 
> 
> 
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