Capital Gains Input Question

[David T.]

I have been trying to enter capital gains/loss in 2.3.17 on a Mac, and I want to understand an interface gotcha. Specifically, it it Extremely Confusing that when you want to enter the split lines for capital gains in a Stock or Mutual Fund account, you can't enter the dollar figure for capital gain directly in the transaction register for the stock. If you try to do this, Gnucash requires **and will automatically assign** a number of shares and a per share price--an action that is guaranteed to throw your portfolio off.

However, Gnucash allows these splits to exist--it just requires you to enter the split information from a different register. It seems to me that either you should be allowed to enter a cash split line in a register--or not. This "You can't do it here, but you might be able to do it from over there" interface is very very very very confusing. 

Furthermore, having a register behavior that automatically defaults to mess up your balance sheet would seem to me to be, ahem, rather problematic in an accounting package.

Perhaps there could be a way to designate a Capital Gains account type that would allow Gnucash to determine that a particular split is meant to be cash-denominated, despite being entered in a stock or mutual fund account type?

David