Text field alignments

[Donald Allen]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 1:14 PM, Charles Day <cedayiv at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 7:32 AM, Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Charles Day <cedayiv at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 7:18 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).
>> >
>> > The current state (a mix of right- and left-justification) seems
>> > unacceptable.
>>
>> I think we all agree with that.
>>
>>  I can quite easily make it consistent. Does there need to be a
>> > debate about left vs. right before I make the change?
>>
>> Obviously I think so.
>>
>>  (I'd much prefer
>> > right-justification personally.)
>>
>> Please tell us why.
>
> Pretty much because there are whole bunch of accounts starting with
> "Assets:Current Assets:" which is fairly long and not as useful to see, at
> least for me. Brokerage accounts are even worse, like a whole bunch that all
> start with something long like "Assets:Investments:Vanguard:".
> With income and expenses, for me the leaf name is usually distinct enough
> without seeing the "Income" or "Expenses", as most expense accounts have
> names like "Dining", "Gas", etc., which could not be Income. Sure there are
> some exceptions, such as "Rent" which could be either income or expense, but
> these are fairly easy to distinguish by making a small adjustment to the
> name (e.g. name the expense "Rent Paid").

Thanks. This is similar to arguments that have been made before and
I've indicated how and why I disagree with it (at least for me), so I
won't repeat.

I really think the best solution is to fix the current non-uniformity
of the justification, which I think we can all agree is a mistake,
and to add an option that allows the user to choose from
left-justified, right-justified, and the centered ellipsis idea
proposed earlier. I don't much care what the default is, so long as I
can set the option and forget it.

The reason I think the option approach is best is that we have
different styles of account naming in the Gnucash community and one
size doesn't fit all in this case, as I think is clear from this
discussion. I don't think your way of doing things is *wrong* in any
absolute sense, especially if it works well for you. But it's not
suitable for the way I use Gnucash and I'd like to have the option of
setting it up the way it works best for me. And there's ample
precedent among the already-existing Gnucash options (e.g., I run it
with "formal accounting labels" enabled, obviously I prefer it that
way, but I don't think it would be hard to find people who would be
driven to distraction by that).

/Don


>>
>> /Don
>>
>
> Cheers,
> Charles