Problems with QIF import for checking account - category matching seems horribly designed

[Randy Burgess]

For one reason or another I haven't used the QIF import function in 
about a year. Today I just made my first try at importing a QIF for my 
checking account, and to my dismay the functionality has been altered to 
effectively make it useless -  unless there's some clever trick I'm 
missing. (This is Gnucash 1.8.11 on Gentoo.)

Here's the problem: The import wizard forces you to match categories 
before it proceeds to actually do the import. The idea seems to be that 
it will remember the matches and automate this process the next time 
around.

But why does it need to match categories like this in the first place? 
It didn't used to, back in previous versions (whatever I was using a 
year ago).

Obviously this process can't handle splits, of which I have many. It 
can't handle the fact that for many of my payees, I have more than one 
category depending on the nature of the expense.

So basically the import is more trouble than it's worth. And I haven't 
found any options to get around the problem.