Vanishing transactions and log file

[Donald Allen]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 9:04 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> "Donald Allen" <donaldcallen at gmail.com> writes:
>
>  > The thing that is confusing is that when a register is viewed in
>  > anything other than 'transaction journal' mode, something that was
>  > entered as one transaction shows up as two entries. You say that the
>  > register shows splits, but I don't completely buy that. There
>  > per-transaction fields, e.g.,  'description'  and 'date'. These show
>  > up twice in the 'Basic Ledger' and 'Auto-split Ledger' modes for
>  > transactions like this where the account appears twice in a
>  > transaction. But then they show up once when using the 'transaction
>  > journal' mode.
>
>  Sorry, let me expand my statement.  The register LISTS splits, showing
>  split (and associated transaction) data.  But the primary entity in
>  a standard basic register is a Split, not a Transaction.  This is why
>  you see duplicate entries, because you have two splits from the same
>  transaction so you get two line entries in the register..  Both lines
>  showing the same transactional data but different split data.

Thanks for the clarification.

Thinking about this some more, one *could* imagine the atomic particle
of the basic register being a transaction, not a split. Then, in a
case like this, you would see one entry, not two. I think for most
people (myself initially, and probably for Ross) this would be less
confusing. But it would also be less informative, as I mentioned in my
previous message, because without expanding the splits, you would not
know that there were two splits involving the account (for which
you've displayed the basic register). I prefer it as it is, having
figured it out after my first "what's this?" reaction and come to
realize that it makes sense.

/Don

>
>
>
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>  -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
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