Cash Flow report vs. Income Statement

[Lincoln A. Baxter]

On Wed, 2009-06-17 at 15:12 -0400, Ken Heard wrote:
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> 3.  From a discussion of 1 and 2, the content format can be developed.
> I can off-hand think of the following three documents, or groups of
> documents:
> 
> a. A basic primer on double entry bookkeeping.
> 
> b. Howtos for the average 12 year old user. (I would use my 12 year old
> grandson as the prototype user.)
> 
> c. A reference manual for the code writers and advanced users.
> 
When I first started to use GNU cash, I found the intermixing of the
accounting priciples information in the documenation useful.  I think it
should be kept, especially since it it not going to change, and it is
useful for those coming to GC from tools like M$ Money, and Quicken,
which are NOT double entry accounting systems.  IANAA.

A reference manual would require the developers to write it, and that
would take time from developing new functionality.  It would be useful,
and might help bring new developers up to speed more quickly if it were
maintained. If it were not, then it would quickly become obsolete, and
more harmful than useful.  From a developers POV, well written code
documents itself.  I have not looked that the GC sources, so I will not
give an opinion of GC in this matter, but I have coded for many years,
and I assume that if I had an itch I wanted to scratch badly enough,
would would just crack the code, and ask questions when I needed to.  I
have periodically seen questions on the list, like "where do I start if
I want to do X?"  I seen those a legitimate questions, because that give
the questioner, a head start on working on HIS itch, and s/he will learn
the peripheral stuff as they get lead to it.

Lincoln