plain text report output

TyrusMaynard mayn at main.nc.us
Sat Apr 1 12:23:30 EST 2006


I am still a newbie trying to grasp the ability of gnucash printing tools.
I am learning my way through reports and wondering about the limitations for 
saving *plain text* to file with well ordered rows and columns.

      Even though the menu items for Edit> Copy|Paste are greyed out  I 
"discovered" that I can copy and paste from the gnucash application display window.

   I hoped I could grab the neatly displayed rows and columns of a report for a 
similarly "neat"  text file.  Not so... the rows are neat, but the position of 
some fields are skewed according to the amount of characters in previous fields 
that compose the row. This means that a pasted text file has well aligned data 
for leftward columns of a "report" and worsening skew for text derived from 
rightward columns  of a report.  Now a piece of cake in the word processor of 
your choice becomes tortuous work.   In many web pages, I find that sections of 
text that display well also maintains good order when copied and pasted into a 
text file.
   Can plain text alignment be improved in whatever code or style sheet that is 
used to generate a report (assuming such a report is HTML)?
    Presumably, this would involve design for good behavior of copy/paste ...not 
simply good design for the HTML displayed outcome.

   Isn't the *text file* an overlooked asset for report output?  wouldn't it be 
handy to have a plain text output that is well aligned and can be further 
"beautified" in any word processor?

The pixel map problem:
   The gnucash printer output seems to be purely pixel output for pdf or ps or 
fax. On my Linux based printing, gnucash is the only application I have that is 
loaded with text content but difficult to print, always seeming to horizontally 
chop up the first and last line  between pages.
On almost every page the top or bottom line has been mowed like grass ...(not so 
bad that I cant figure out which transaction has been butchered and at least 
reconstruct that line by flipping pages).  Even if the printer output can be 
perfected for pdf/ps, I think that the printer output misses the value of being 
able to copy and paste well ordered *text*" from a gnucash display and it is 
certainly no way for Dorothy to get back home to Kansas (plain text).
   If I correctly understand that HTML is used to display a gnucash report 
...how can that display be made friendly to copy and paste or some other means 
of saving text?
   For now I am happy to use copy/paste to store or process my output in the 
wordprocessor of my choice.

   I think its great that gnucash reports are theoretically web friendly ...can 
they be more text friendly  ?

Ty


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