Quickfill gripe -- again!

[David T.]

________________________________
 From: Paul Abrahams <abrahams at acm.org>
To: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> 
Cc: David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>; Fred Bone <Fred.Bone at dial.pipex.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 12:06 PM
Subject: Re: Quickfill gripe -- again!
 
On Tuesday, December 20, 2011 11:10:30 AM David T. wrote:
> I will assume that your "<b>" represents the backspace key.

<b> was supposed to represent "blank", not backspace.  That was a poor choice 
on my part.  Please reexamine my comments (reproduced below) with that in 
mind.  
> 
> There are two different issues going with Quickfill. The first is getting
> the description formed as we like; the other is getting the splits the way
> we like. I will comment only on the first, since I do not know how to avoid
> the second...
> 
> My experience is that if I type "Kmart.<b>" (note the trailing period
> followed by the backspace) that the description field stays "Kmart". And it
> does not need further additions on subsequent iterations. Paul, I believe
> that was the point that Fred was making.

I believe that typing "Kmart.<bs>" is in every way equivalent to simply typing 
"Kmart".  Is that right?

No. If you have an imported transaction with "KMART" as the description and type in "Kmart", Gnucash will retain "KMART". once you put the period on the end, however, Gnucash reverts to "Kmart.", and when you backspace at this point, the form "Kmart" is retained. [My personal gripe is that this really is anti-Quickfill, but that's another thread altogether]

> 
> The issue of unwanted split configuration has come up before, and no one has
> proposed a viable solution that meets everyone's needs.

Cancelling the quickfill by whatever method would perforce cancel an unwanted 
split.  And the method I recommend is that a trailing space <s> does the 
cancellation.

As far as what one wants: if the memorized transaction was a split, then there 
are three possibilities: you want the same split as before, you want a 
different split, or you want no split  In the first case, quickfill does exactly 
the right thing; in the third case, cancelling the quickfill does the right 
thing.  The second case is squishier -- is it easier to edit the previous 
split or just construct a new one?  Really, the user should have the choice in 
that case, and a quickfill cancellation convention provides that choice.

I'll note for the record that in Gnucash, every transaction has at least one split, so I don't quite understand your third case. As for your squishy middle case, how exactly do you propose implementing this? As I noted, this has come up in earlier threads, without anyone arriving at a solution that meets people's various needs--never mind anyone actually offering code to implement that ethereal solution.

David