another auto-complete point

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Shane Litherland <litherland-farm at bigpond.com> writes:

> Hi all,
> the query about getting around autofill reminded me of my experiences I
> want to throw in comments about.
> It's actually about getting more autofill capability in some areas -
> e.g. i create an invoice/AP, and I enter several line items. after i
> type the description in the first line, it will auto-complete for any
> subsequent lines - great!. But, when i go to make another invoice, i
> again have to type the description (and remember my wording for
> consistency) in the first line of each new invoice.

Yes, the autofill database is dynamic and it's re-initialized for
every invoice.  It doesn't use the full set of Entries for it's
source.

> Also, even on same invoice, i can autofill a description, but still have
> to manually type the unit price, of course this is the same value all
> the time for the same type of item too.

Yes, the per-line auto-complete isn't fully implemented.

> I'm still to get right behind the GUI of gnucash, but in my basic
> experience with other database type stuff, i'm thinking the other parts
> of a line entry (e.g. field for hours/project/materials, or field for
> account to post to) always has the autofill / drop-down menu, this must
> be sourcing the info from somewhere - forgive my 'dark side' comparison,
> but in an MS Access database, this info would be in a table, aka a list
> of the options? And for item descriptions in said database, i'd made

Some of the drop-downs have a hard-coded initial list.  Others do it
dynamically based on previous entries.  But the entry list is based
only on previous entries in the same Invoice.

> tables to list various items, their description, and their unit price.
> So, one could type the item/description (or for consistency/safety,
> choose from the drop-down list), and the description and unit price
> would autofill, on any invoice to any customer. (Basically, the
> invoicing process could refer to an inventory of what we could sell to a
> client) so, any ideas for improvements in invoices, so description
> field, price in a new invoice can still 'look up' descriptions used in
> previous invoices? Or have I missed something still?

Sounds like a great idea!  I await your patches.

> I'm not using it to such an extent that the manual retyping is a
> concern, but this option i think would be good, for speed of use and
> consistency in data entered.
> As I mentioned, still rough on the code behind gnucash, but if this
> sparks any ideas with others, i'm happy to throw more of my
> thoughts/suggestions around.
>
> Cheers,
> Shane.

> 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