Report customization nightmare

[Andrew Sackville-West]

/me holds nose and jumps in

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 05:25:39PM -0400, Michael Leone wrote:
[...]

>  Although for me, the "look" is of less interest
> than how easily I can choose and then arrange the accounts I want on
> the report. So that I only see certain expenses, in a specified time
> period, and also see a total of those, and perhaps a total of another
> account, as a comparison.

Except for possibly the comparison with another account (and the
vagueness of language is a crucial factor here), in what way can you
not do the above in the current reports?

[...]

> All I said that was using a programming language to design a custom
> report was not the best solution, and expecting "normal" (read:
> non-technical) end users to learn one, in order to customize a report,
> is not realistic. 

extending the functionality of a program to provide new features
*requires* at some point, some kind of programming. True, it may be
very simplified, may have some kind of clicky interface, but the
reality is that for customized reports, this is required. Or so it
seems to me.

> Would some kind of GUI designer, where you could
> perhaps check off what accounts you want to see on the report, be
> better?

This already exists, unless I completely misunderstand what you mean
by selecting accounts. Open the Income Statement report, click Options
-> Accounts tab -> select accounts -> Click OK...

Here's my .02 on the whole reports issue. 

1. I think many, if not most, requirements can be easily met with the
current reports, there is just a lack of documentation of how to get
what you want from these reports. I know that in my 6+ years of using
gnucash for my business, I have only needed a report that was not
explicitly provided by the program a handful of times. And usually I
have found a reasonable work-around using the Search Results register
and reports on it.

2. If a user has a need for a particular report, they need to specify
(*specify* with details!) what they need in a report. Hopefully
someone can pipe-up with a way to get what is needed in the existing
reports. If it can't be done (and I find it pretty doubtful (ignoring
the investment reports)), then a detailed specification should be
provided as a bug report. Report writing is a decent way to get
started in gnucash development. Prospective new developers can be
directed to the report request bugs as a way to cut their teeth

3. This is highly speculative, and I'm not offering the lines of code
to make it happen, but... A large amount of the code in a report is
either boiler-plate or option setting. It would not be unreasonable to
provide a domain specific language (I know, I know, that's what guile
is...) to eliminate most of the boiler plate and option code and get
to the nut of a particular report -- what data to provide and how to
display it. ISTM that most of the functionality is *very*
straightforward, and providing a specific DSL to address reporting
could be a good solution. 

As said, this is all very much my .02.

A
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