Success installing Windows v2.2.1; first impressions (and some bugs)

[John Roberts]

I installed GnuCash 2.2.1 on Windows XP.  Installation process went fine (no 
errors).  I couldn't get version 2.2.0 to launch, but 2.2.1 does work!  
(Note: it took ~20 seconds to start, so don't be alarmed if it starts a bit 
slowly.)  I couldn't get 2.2.0 to launch, so the issue seems to have been 
fixed.

General look and feel is terrific.  As a long-time Quicken user, after just 
a few minutes of clicking around I'm getting the hang of it.  As part of 
this process, I created a test file with a few accounts, stocks, etc. but I 
have not yet tried importing from Quicken.

A few initial observations & bugs:
-- In the setup new accounts screen (which has at the top the text "If you 
would like an account to be a placeholder account, just click the checkbox 
for that account."  It's not possible to click or unclick the checkboxes 
under "Placeholder".
-- I tried getting stock quotes.  In the "New security" dialog under "Quote 
Source Information" it says: "Warning: Finance::Quote not installed 
properly."  I think I need to install ActivePerl (per the Wiki), but I'm not 
sure.  It would be nice if this process was better documented.
-- It took a few minutes to figure out that I'll have to create a separate 
sub-account of brokerage accounts for each stock I own.  I think this 
actually makes a lot of sense, but I need to ponder the implications more.
-- Tiny nit: Under the reconcile colum "y" seems to mean "reconciled" and 
"n" seems to mean not reconciled and "c" means pending.  A graphic "check" 
symbol would look nicer than "y" and blank would be nicer than "n".  
Clicking on unreconciled transactions toggles them between "n" and "c" but 
not "y" which is different from Quicken.  Also needs pondering.
-- It's not clear if/how I can make GnuCash prompt for a password when 
changing transactions prior to a certain date (i.e., the date when my books 
were closed).
-- The "Price editor" GNI is seems broken (or it's very non-intuitive).  In 
particular, I think it should be possible to specify historical values for a 
stock here.  Instead, each time I enter a new price, the entries for the 
stock I created all get updated to the new price/date and I get multiple 
entries for the stock.  Closing the price editor and going back seems to 
show values that seem plausible.
-- The "general ledger" has a bunch of empty transactions in it.  I'm not 
sure why.  They're dated with today's date and appear before the "Opening 
Balance" transaction I created.  Clicking around on the screen causes the 
blank transactions to vanish.  Trying to enter a new transaction into the 
ledger creates warnings as I try to enter it saying "This transaction is 
already being edited in another register.  Please finish editing it there 
first."  Closed and re-opened gnucash.  Still funny empty "phantom" 
transactions appearing in general ledger.  As I do other things, the number 
of junk blank transactions seems to increase.
-- In the reconcile window, the symbolunder the "R" column that probably 
should be a check-mark is just a bit of a squiggly line.  I think the 
checkmark is too large to fit into the space allocated and as a result is 
being cropped.
-- The "Save file automatically" dialog is annoying, especially since it 
keeps popping up even when other programs are running.
-- My general status of the program's status is that it's "alpha-test" 
quality.  It might be a good idea to convey this a bit better on the home 
page, as a reviewer might otherwise expect it to be more polished and write 
an (unfairly) negative review as a result.

[Note: I'm not currently subscribed for Bugzilla, so hopefully someone can 
report any of these that seem significant.]

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