utilization of standards

[Doug Laidlaw]

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:05:06 pm Maciej Gawinecki wrote:
> Hi,
>
> When I discovered your program I start wondering:
>
> if there is open and free standard OFX defining syntax and semantics
>    of account statements, then why so many banks use their own approaches
>    to form them: CSV, TXT etc ? Is it the matter of difficulty and money,
>    while adapting an application (e.g. e-bank site) to OFX standard ?
>
> Please, let me know, if you have any hipothesis or experience,
>
> Regards,
>
> Maciej
>
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In Australia, OFX seems to be unobtainable from the banks.  I think that 
Quicken/Quickbooks has become the de facto standard.  Every bank provides 
Quicken files.  If you use MYOB, you have to download a QIF file and import 
it, as we do with Gnucash.  One of my banks offers a couple of specialist 
formats, but both are simply CSV with a different label for users of that 
program.

Yet the QIF has no standard.  The one exported by MyMoney2 can't be imported 
into Gnucash - I tried.  Even the Quicken site itself has no intelligible 
description of a QIF file, and I heard somewhere that they no longer support 
it, although I am not sure what that means.  My Quicken is the 2005 version.

I know that OFX is an ISO standard, but how long has it been that way?

Doug.
-- 
Be wisely worldly, be not worldly wise.
   - Francis Quarles.