Text field alignments

[Donald Allen]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 1:08 PM, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Don--
>
> I'm going to suggest that the right-justified option will be better overall, but for a slightly different reason than Derek and others have proposed (which I agree with, nevertheless).

At this point, after all the discussion and persuasive arguments, I'm
convinced that if we had to pick one, right-justification probably
does the most good for the most people. But we don't have to pick one.
We can have the option(s) I've described, with defaults set to
right-justify, and we're all happy.

>
> I believe that users are more likely to follow the Unique Leaf Naming Scheme (and therefore benefit from right justification) for the additional reason that the leaf is also the string that is placed in the tab when multiple accounts are open. Using the leaf naming you have will result in the same entry appearing in the tab for each of those accounts, and (speaking from experience) a user will quickly see that renaming leaves so that they are unambiguous in the tabs will reduce the possibility of entering transactions in the wrong window. I've run into this when trying to deal with Flexible Spending Accounts, where I have both Equity and Liability accounts to track the ins and outs for one "Account".

But the tabs have those nice popup info boxes if you slide the cursor
over them. Not a lot of effort and, for me, I wouldn't endure the pain
of unique leaf-account names to avoid it. Let me give you an example:
suppose I own IBM stock in two different brokerage accounts, one
taxable, one tax-deferred. So I've got (asset/stock) accounts named
IBM associated with each of the brokerage accounts. Furthermore, IBM
pays a dividend (though I haven't checked this morning; maybe they've
been nationalized :-), so I would have taxable and tax-deferred income
accounts named IBM, since the two income sources require different tax
treatment. Do you think it makes sense to name these four leaf
accounts "Non-IRA IBM stock", "IRA IBM stock", "Non-IRA IBM
dividends", "IRA IBM dividends"?

/Don


>
> I think this is an additional impetus to use unique leaf names.
>
> David
>
> --- On Wed, 2/25/09, Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: Text field alignments
>> To: "Derek Atkins" <warlord at mit.edu>
>> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org, Fred.Bone at dial.pipex.com
>> Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 5:42 AM
>> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Derek Atkins
>> <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
>> > Don,
>> >
>> > Quoting Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com>:
>> >
>> > [snip]
>> >>
>> >> 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).
>> >
>> > Could you perchance provide some examples of some full
>> account
>> > names in your datafile?  In particular, could you
>> provide full
>> > examples of accounts that you feel would not work in a
>> right
>> > justification but would work with a left
>> justification?  I'm asking
>> > because honestly I just can't think of any at all.
>>
>> I will. See below. But first I want to comment on your
>> examples.
>>
>> >
>> > For example, I have accounts like:
>> >
>> > Assets:Current Assets:LJ&A:Aggressive Growth
>> Portfolio:DFA Intl Small Cap
>> > Value
>> > Assets:Current Assets:LJ&A:DFA Intl Small Cap
>> Value
>> >
>> > In a left-justified view I see this for both of these
>> accounts:
>> >  Assets:Current Assets:LJ&
>>
>> So you know you've headed in the right direction, but
>> you can't tell
>> which one you've got without seeing more of the account
>> name (to the
>> right). You are not likely to look at this and say
>> "well, this is
>> fine, I'm done" and perhaps end up with the wrong
>> account.
>>
>> >
>> > However in a right-justified view I see:
>> >  A:DFA Intl Small Cap Value
>> > or
>> >  io:DFA Intl Small Cap Value
>>
>> Perfectly unambiguous. But suppose your Transfer column
>> were a little
>> narrower and what you saw was
>>
>> DFA Intl Small Cap Value
>> DFA Intl Small Cap Value
>>
>> for either account. Now the UI has set a trap for you. You
>> might say
>> "yep, that's the right one", forgetting that
>> you've got another leaf
>> account with the same name.
>>
>> >
>> > I also have accounts like:
>> >
>> > Assets:Current Assets:MIT FCU:Checking
>> > Assets:Current Assets:MIT FCU:Savings
>> > Assets:Current Assets:NetBank:Checking
>> > Assets:Current Assets:NetBank:Savings
>> >
>> > Left-justified I see:
>> >  Assets:Current Assets:MIT
>> > or
>> >  Assets:Current Assets:Net
>> >
>> > So I know what financial institution but not which
>> account.
>> > Right justified I see:
>> >  t Assets:MIT FCU:Checking
>> > or
>> >  t Assets:NetBank:Checking
>> >
>> > In all these cases the right-justified name gives me
>> all the info I need
>> > provided I know (or can assume) the major branch of
>> the tree that I'm using.
>>
>> Same idea. Whether what you see is unambiguous or not
>> depends on the
>> column width which probably depends on the display
>> resolution (my X61
>> is 1024x768 -- when at home, it's DVM'ed to a
>> bigger external display,
>> but on a train, 1024x768 is all I've got; and there are
>> some other
>> small machines around now with comparatively low-res
>> displays).
>>
>> My account names are similar to yours, though sometimes
>> there are not
>> only leaves of the same name, but the next node up as well,
>> which
>> makes the problem worse. For example,
>>
>> Assets:Investments:Stocks:Tax-deferred:Don:Vanguard
>> Individual IRA:Foo
>> Index Fund
>> Assets:Investments:Stocks:Tax-deferred:Joan:Vanguard
>> Individual
>> IRA:Foo Index Fund
>> >
>> > So, Don, I'm trying to understand your use case
>> and how left-justification
>> > would help you in your system?
>>
>> For people who never use the same names for multiple
>> leaves, this is
>> not an issue and for them, and right justification  works
>> better,
>> because they are guaranteed that what they see is
>> unambiguous. But for
>> those who prefer not to clutter account names with
>> redundant
>> information, e.g.,
>>
>> Assets:Investments:Stocks:Tax-deferred:Don:Vanguard
>> Individual
>> IRA:Don's Foo Index Fund
>> Assets:Investments:Stocks:Tax-deferred:Joan:Vanguard
>> Individual
>> IRA:Joan's Foo Index Fund
>>
>> then I think left-justification is less likely to lead to
>> error.
>>
>> So, given this, I say let's have our cake and eat it,
>> too and make the
>> justification mode an option. I would think that left- and
>> right-justification would be easy to provide (both are
>> already in the
>> code :-). I also think there's some merit to the
>> centered ellipsis
>> idea, especially if it's easy to do. If you chose not
>> to do it, I
>> personally would be fine with the left-right choice. And
>> I'd also like
>> to advocate making that option a function of the
>> transaction display
>> mode. What I mean by this is that I'd like to be able
>> control the
>> setting for Basic Ledger and full split-mode (either by
>> virtue of
>> clicking 'split' or using auto-split or transaction
>> journal)
>> independently. The reason is that, having thought about
>> this whole
>> issue a bit more, I'm thinking that there may be method
>> to the current
>> madness  (yes, I'm retracting my "we can all agree
>> that the current
>> behavior is wrong" statement of yesterday). Why?
>> Because I generally
>> don't edit transactions in Basic Ledger mode, and my
>> advocacy of
>> left-justification is mostly for use during the editing
>> process, when
>> I'm trying to correctly enter a transaction. Once
>> I've decided the
>> transaction is correct and hit 'enter', then
>> right-justification gives
>> me more information at a glance (with typical column
>> widths) and I'm
>> usually glancing in Basic Ledger mode.
>>
>> This sounds complicated, but the average user would not
>> need to be
>> concerned with it. The defaults could provide the
>> right-justification
>> in both Basic Ledger and full-split-mode that everyone
>> seems to favor
>> and most will not change them.
>>
>> While we're (I'm) obsessing over this, here's
>> an additional idea. I
>> note that there's an issue with the account tabs
>> similar to the one
>> we're discussing. The tabs show only the name of the
>> node displayed in
>> the register, not its full path from the root, and thus can
>> be
>> ambiguous. The problem is solved by use of the yellow info
>> popup that
>> appears when you point to the tab. Use the same technique
>> with columns
>> containing accounts. Pop up the full account name when the
>> user points
>> to it, but do so only if the full account name isn't
>> already
>> displayed. Having this happen when the user randomly moves
>> the mouse
>> could get annoying really fast, so with this little
>> optimization, the
>> user can control the probability of it happening by varying
>> the column
>> width.  I would also provide an option that allows the user
>> to
>> enable/disable, so those that hate it can turn it off.
>>
>> /Don
>>
>>
>> >
>> >> /Don
>> >
>> > Thanks!
>> >
>> > -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
>> >
>> >
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