The Experience Of Reports

[Donald Allen]

Phil wrote:

From: Phil Longstaff <plongstaff at rogers.com>
To: gnucash-devel at gnucash.org, fireflys_98 at yahoo.com, "Users Gnucash" <
gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:41:08 -0400
Subject: Re: The Experience Of Reports
On August 26, 2009 08:53:26 pm fireflys_98 at yahoo.com wrote:
> David,
>
> This is where IMHO the Sql Backend will probably make life a lot easier.
>
> I haven't bothered to look at scheme, since once I upgrade to the database
> backed I can create ad-hoc reports very quickly.
>
>  Perhaps also a simple problem of lack of understanding, I have no idea
> what your monthly cash flow report would want to show, nor many of the
> other reports that I've seen requested here. Sent via BlackBerry from
> T-Mobile

What tools would you use for reports?  I've been looking for an open-source
Crystal Reports-like tool that could be used but haven't found anything.

Phil

Don responds:

Some time ago, frustrated by the shortcomings of the gnucash reports, I
wrote a report generator for myself in Python that eats the xml file and
generates the reports I want using latex and gnuplot.

BTW, I agree with the person who observed in an earlier post that adding or
modifying reports was not just a matter of learning Scheme, but also
learning the gnucash report environment. I've written Lisp and Scheme code
for more than 30 years, but it was easier to deal with the xml than to try
to learn the environment. And while I prefer working in Scheme in most
situations where blazing speed isn't a requirement, I chose Python for my
report application because the xml parser I tried with MIT Scheme was
unusably slow (and it was compiled).

I am looking forward to Phil's database backend being released as production
software. It will improve gnucash along a number of dimensions, including
making the kind of report generation I'm doing much less messy.

/Don