Text field alignments

[Maf. King]

On Tuesday 24 February 2009 16:03:12 Donald Allen wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Maf. King <maf at chilwell.net> wrote:
> > On Tuesday 24 February 2009 15:30:09 Donald Allen wrote:
> >> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 10:18 AM, Tommy Trussell
> >>
> >> <tommy.trussell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com>
> >
> > wrote:
> >> >> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> >> >> > Charles Day <cedayiv at gmail.com> writes:
> >> >> >> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Fred Bone
> >
> > <Fred.Bone at dial.pipex.com>wrote:
> >> >> >>> When viewing a register in "Basic Ledger" view, the
> >> >> >>> "other-account" names in the "Transfer" column are
> >> >> >>> right-justified. So if the complete account name is too long to
> >> >> >>> fit, the high-end ("Assets", for example) is cut.
> >> >> >>>
> >> >> >>> However, in a "Split" view, the corresponding text in each split
> >> >> >>> is left- justified - except when that part of that split is
> >> >> >>> selected. This means that, for example, I see
> >> >> >>>  "Assets:Current Assets:Savings Accounts:"
> >> >> >>> and have to select the entry to see *which* savings account it
> >> >> >>> is.
> >> >> >>>
> >> >> >>> Is there any particular reason for this behaviour?
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> I don't know, but if no one responds with a particular reason for
> >> >> >> leaving it alone, I will go ahead and change it to be
> >> >> >> right-justified.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > I have no idea why it is the way it is; I think changing it is
> >> >> > fine.
> >> >>
> >> >> I'd suggest changing both to left-justified. Without doing anything,
> >> >> I'd rather see the high-order bits, the part of the path closest to
> >> >> the root of the account tree. I frequently have multiple leaf
> >> >> accounts with the same name, e.g., investments in the same mutual
> >> >> fund or stock in, say, my IRA and my wife's IRA.
> >> >
> >> >  Interesting situation, but I think this would NOT be a typical case,
> >> > and your situation would be easily addressed by adding a bit of
> >> > redundancy to the account name. (You could add the appropriate
> >> > initials to them, for example).
> >>
> >> I (obviously) disagree. For example, you have multiple accounts
> >> (individual IRAs plus taxable accounts) at a big mutual fund company
> >> like Vanguard and each of them has holdings in, say, "Prime Money
> >> Market", a common situation. Cluttering the leaf accounts with
> >> initials, as you suggest, strikes me as kludgery to work around
> >> something that isn't fundamentally sound (you don't do this with
> >> identical filenames in different directories, or identical variable
> >> names in different scopes).  I could make some programming-language
> >> analogies here, but I'll refrain from doing so for fear of setting off
> >> an irrelevant religious war :-)
> >>
> >> /Don
> >
> > Yes, but in the case you make, Don, the top-level account (Assets, or
> > whatever) is common to all the leaf accounts, and therefore not relevant
> > in the case posted by the OP, who is looking for some consistent
> > behaviour in the how register displays long tree paths.
> >
> > As long as this is only about what overflows the text box by default,
> > then my vote is for everything to be right-justified in the registers, as
> > this will IMHO show more people more useful info more of the time.
> >
> > /gets ready with flameproofing spray....
>
> Nahh. I actually agree with the way you are thinking about it, even
> though you are coming out differently than I am (that's probably a
> distant relative of "I have no idea what you just said, but I disagree
> with it"). What I'm talking about is that we should be asking
> ourselves "what is the most common case and how do we best serve that
> case?", which is what you are doing. Using right-justification, only
> those people who have no duplicate leaf-account names can be sure they
> have the right one without any further graphical gestures. I think our
> disagreement boils down to how common that is. If they are in the
> majority, then you are right. I don't claim to know what the Gnucash
> user population actually does, but I've made my case for why multiple
> leaf accounts with the same name makes sense, why I think it could be
> common (another example: Expenses:Auto:2005 Toyota Prius:Maintenance
> and  Expenses:Auto:1996 Toyota Camry:Maintenance) and why I don't
> think cluttering the names with extra stuff to force them to be
> different is a clean solution.
>
> /Don
>

Hi Don,

I agree with your reasoning of why there may be multiple leaves with the same 
names, IMHO the leaf level is more useful than the top level in a partial 
display of a  "fully-qualified-account-name" (FQAN)

<contrived example>
You have a transaction in your current account register.  Would you rather see 
the transfer column distinguish between your two sample accounts as:

Expenses:Auto:...   /  Expenses:Auto:...
or
...us:Maintenance / ...ry:Maintenance

(assuming only 14 chars are displayed, and I can't remember if GC adds the ... 
on overflow)
</contrived example>

I don't think that either way will allow instant confirmation that 
transactions are in the right place without mouse gesturing, but the parent 
end of a FQAN is less likely to be wrong than the leaf end....?

Maybe the answer is to use short account names (eg Maint rather than 
Maintenance)?

 
Maf.