Report question: cash flow for 2010

[John Ralls]

On Apr 10, 2011, at 6:31 AM, David Carlson wrote:

> On 4/8/2011 12:59 PM, David T. wrote:
>> 
>> --- On Fri, 4/8/11, David Carlson <carlson.dl at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> From: David Carlson <carlson.dl at sbcglobal.net>
>>> Subject: Re: Report question: cash flow for 2010
>>> To: "brad" <bradhaack at fastmail.us>
>>> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org, "Derek Atkins" <derek at ihtfp.com>, abrahams at acm.org
>>> Date: Friday, April 8, 2011, 9:58 AM
>>> On 4/8/2011 11:01 AM, brad wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 2011-04-08 at 11:08 -0400, Derek Atkins
>>> wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, April 8, 2011 11:02 am, Paul Abrahams
>>> wrote:
>>>>>> The
>>>>>> documentation is of little help.  I'm
>>> sure I'll want many other
>>>>>> variations,
>>>>>> but getting this first simple one is the
>>> beginning.
>>>>> Once you run the report, open the Report Options
>>> dialog by clicking on the
>>>>> "Options" button on the toolbar.  Then you
>>> can reconfigure the report for
>>>>> whatever you'd like, including setting different
>>> dates.
>>>> Since this seems to be easily overlooked by the 1st
>>> timer and some of
>>>> the default reports can take a long to time run, 
>>> has it been considered
>>>> to open up the Options dialog by default when a report
>>> is run?   
>>> Paul makes a good point.  Better documentation is
>>> desperately needed.  I
>>> also like Brad's suggestion. 
>> WRT documentation, I submitted this just now:
>> 
>> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647197
>> 
>>> I think another option should be to select fonts and font
>>> sizes.  In
>>> particular, he Transaction Report *Shouts* in extremely
>>> large type,
>>> burning a lot of paper and toner or ink.  A print
>>> preview would also
>>> help, so we know in advance that the report will take half
>>> a ream of
>>> paper to print.
>>> 
>>> David Carlson.
>>> 
>>> David Carlson
>>> 
>>> -----Inline Attachment Follows-----
>>> 
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> I see that bug report
> <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647197> and I hope it
> triggers some action. 
> I want to clarify one point, however, and that bug report is not the
> right place for my clarification.  Actually, Quicken, including Quicken
> 2011, does produce reports to default settings before allowing the user
> to change settings.  The big difference is that Quicken produces the
> report in a separate window which allows continued activity in other
> windows.  As you know, Quicken is a Windows OS only program that does
> not need to be limited to code that compiles into many different OS's. 
> Since GnuCash also allows new "pages" to be opened in separate windows,
> There may be an interest in doing reports that way.
> I think that there is room for more discussion on this topic.

Perhaps I misunderstand you, but Gnucash does open reports in a separate window if you select "Open reports in a new window" in Preferneces>Reports.

What you're really asking for, I think, is to be able to work on something else in Gnucash while the report is being computed.  That would require Gnucash to do the work in a separate thread, and while it's absolutely a good idea, it's also rather difficult to implement with Gnucash's present design, just as is multi-user access. We've just begun the work needed to change the architecture to support both, and I expect that it will take 2 - 3 years to complete.

Regards,
John Ralls