Report customization nightmare

[Mike Leone]

On 6/29/2010 6:47 PM, Andrew Sackville-West had this to say:
> /me holds nose and jumps in

Oh, it's nowhere near that bad. :-)

>
>> 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.

Not by the end user. And no, clicking options on an interface screen 
does not count as programming done by the end user.

I'm lucky; I have no investments to report, nor use GnuCash for 
business, etc. The only report I sometimes want to look at is an expense 
report, listing only specific expenses, in a specific time period, with 
sub-totals. I don't want income on it, as that's not what I need the 
report to tell me.

And I can sort of get that from the expense reports. Sort of, because I 
have no interest (and don't want) a piechart or barchart; all I want is 
a table of just the expenses I want, for the time periods I want). As I 
say, I can get that (sort of - I can't seem to turn off that bar chart, 
even when I  but that's not insurmountable). Even that isn't as simple 
as it could be, but that will improve in time, I'm sure. Nor do I want 
the Income and Expense report, as I don't want or need the Income on 
that report. So I just ignore the parts I don't need. It would be nice 
to not have it on there at all, but as I say, it's not insurmountable.

But my situation is probably not typical.