GnuCash setup for multi-country use / and reply-all should be discouraged

[cognitive.libertarian+ml at gmail.com]

* Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> [2010-02-19 07:14]:
> 
> I've seen no patches that "fix this problem"..  But changing
> accounts to hold multiple currencies would be extremely problematic
> given the current architecture.  You would have to modify every
> Split to include a commodity instead of making the current
> assumption that all Splits into an account share a currency (the
> account currency).

I've not seen the code, so I have no idea what kind of overhaul the
fix would involve.  

In terms of splits, I see no significant problem with a split
continuing to assume a single currency, because asset accounts would
still be mono currency.  Expense transactions would inherit the
currency of the asset account.  Generally, splits involve one asset
account to many expense accounts, which is the trivial case.  

But even if you have a split mapping multiple different asset accounts
to a single expense account, complexity only arises if the asset
accounts in that split have currency differences.  And in such an
odd-ball case where someone is doing something strange, it would be
quite acceptible not to support it because splits can always be
represented w/ multiple transactions.  That compromise would be much
more acceptible for multicurrency users than the status quo.  

And supporting the obscure case of multiple currencies involved in a
split should not be too difficult to implement, because the facility
to exchange currencies is already there.  As it is, users do not need
to supply an exchange rate unless there is a currency change, and this
would not need to change.

> Still, show me a patch and then we can discuss its merits.  Ideas
> without patches are more readily ignored, because, well, *I* am not
> going to implement it....

The merit of an enhancement, or fix, is quite separate, and ignoring
it is quite acceptible in your case.  

But that's not what happened here.  In this case, some developer
decided that they personally were not going to implement it (as you
are), but then she used that as a basis for rejecting the bugzilla
record on behalf of everyone.  Presumeably, she was not the only
developer on the project.

> > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

Please don't encourage use of "reply all".  Everyone who posts is
inherently on the list, and gets the message.  We don't need a
duplicate.  

Reply-all is often used by those who have substandard mail clients
that don't offer Reply-To-List, and it creates problems for those who
have proper mail filtering (eg. procmail keying on List-Id).  Dupe
filtering fails on the user end because nothing ensures that the list
reply is the first in sequence, so half the time the list version gets
canned.

In this case, you did a reply-all and I received a personal copy from
you in my personal inbox because the list headers were missing, so it
was not properly filtered.  I actually have the list configured to
only send one copy to my account, but the list software also makes a
poor choice here; it passes along the message with missing headers.