Possible problem with splits

[Derek Atkins]

Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com> writes:

> Are you trying to tell me (when you say that the suggested change would 
> affect how you use GnuCash) that you fill information into the 
> description fields of the individual lines because you thought that 
> information would be useful (when viewing the transaction in the that 
> account) but didn't want to see that information there? If you thought 
> that what I was suggesting would make any change if there was no 
> (individual) description entered then you misunderstood. Gnu cash 
> already extracts (and displays) the amount from the correct line -- 
> presumably not hard to have it also display the specific description IF 
> there was one entered (if not spaces).

There's no extraction.  The register lists Splits, not Transactions.
This is why you see double transactions if you have a split
transaction that touches an account twice (e.g. a stock sale with a
cap gain/loss split).  The way the register works is by pulling out
specific entries.  For the description column it always pulls out
(split) -> parent -> description.

The problem isn't necessarily what happens when you display it.  The
real question is what happens when you CHANGE it.  In your proposal,
what would get changed?  Let's say you have a transaction where one
split has a memo.  (Note that this doesn't even have to be a
multi-split transaction -- you can put split memos into basic
transactions, too.)

So you've got your transaction into accounts A and B.  MemoA is blank.
MemoB has some text.  Then you have the TxnDesc.  So in your proposal
you would see TxnDesc from AcctA and MemoB from AcctB.  But then if
you modify it from AcctA, which gets modified?  The TxnDesc or MemoA?
If you modify from AcctB then what gets modified?  Then of course if
you expand the transaction in AcctB then the data in that space would
have to change from the MemoB to the TxnDesc, which means that line
would visually change as you expand and contract the transaction.
That would be extremely visually confusing.

What this REALLY means is that a particular register cell's contents
vary depending on the view mode, which is also very confusing, both to
the user AND the developer.

I'm thinking of novice users.  I think it's much easier to explain the
current behavior than explaining your proposed behavior.

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available