Quickfill gripe -- again!

[David T.]

________________________________
 From: John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us>
To: David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> 
Cc: Paul Abrahams <abrahams at acm.org>; "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>; Fred Bone <Fred.Bone at dial.pipex.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 8:24 PM
Subject: Re: Quickfill gripe -- again!
 

On Dec 20, 2011, at 6:05 PM, David T. wrote:

> 
> 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.

No, a transaction has at least *two* splits. That's where "double entry" comes from, after all. A transaction marked "--split transaction--" in the account field of basic or double-line view has at least three splits., only one of which is for the current account. A transaction with more than one split in the current account will display once in the register *for each split* unless splits are displayed. (I see this often in my stock accounts because I prefer to do my own cap gains calculations and add the cap gain splits to the sell transaction to using lots and having a separate cap gains transaction.)

Yeah. Sorry. That *is* what I meant; there's a terminology problem here. When I think of the word "split", to me it implies taking one thing and ending up with more than one thing. Common spoken usage follows this: we have "split ends" (hair with more than one end) "split infinitives" (the act of taking the infinitive form of a verb and separating it with other words), we "split wood" (or atoms) (one item ends up in pieces). Therefore, in my mind, a "split" implies more than one thing--not an actual unitary entity. Looking at Wordnet's entry for the noun form of "split" shows plenty of examples similar to the Gnucash usage (e.g. "a promised or claimed share of loot or money"); I should have been more careful with my wording.

David