file extensions

Geert Janssens janssens-geert at telenet.be
Wed Oct 19 05:01:00 EDT 2011


On dinsdag 18 oktober 2011, Harold wrote:
> Sorry, it is just a quirk of mine. In SuperOS (Ubuntu) 10.10, the Gnucash
> version is 2.2.9 and it doesn't have a file extension. That version works
> fine for me. When I do a backup to my flash drive, I click File, SaveAs,
> and save it to the flash drive with same name as previous and it works
> fine. Then I do a second File, SaveAs to the HD and have the same file in
> both places. It seems that in version 2.3.15 and later there is a warning
> about renaming after opening a backup instead of replacing the old file
> with an updated one. That part seems odd to me and I haven't had a problem
> with having to rename in the 2.2.9 version. Hope what I am talking about
> is not confusing.
> 
Let me clarify: GnuCash doesn't really care about the file name extension. It  
will try to open any file you ask it to open (via File->Open or even from the 
command line). It is indeed smart enough to figure out which file it can read 
or not.

The extension is used by your file manager (Dolphin on KDE, Nautilus on Gnome, 
Windows Explorer on Windows,...) to know which application to launch when you 
double-click on a data file. That's what I mean with file associations. If the 
file has a .gnucash extension, you can simply double-click your data file and 
GnuCash will open.

Just try this:
- Find your data file in whatever file manager you use.
- Make a copy of it, and remove the .gnucash file extension.
- Double-click the file
=> On my Fedora system it now opens Ark, because Dolphin recognizes your file 
as a gzipped file instead of a GnuCash file.

When GnuCash didn't enforce file extensions, we got complaints that double-
click didn't work. That's why we changed this policy.

If you don't care about the double-click behaviour, you can always remove the 
extension using your file manager and then use GnuCash to open the file 
without extension. GnuCash will only add an extension during a Save As... 
operation and to the backup files it creates.

> 
> I did wonder, if version 2.2.9 works fine then what could be the great
> improvements in version 2.4.7 other than a default file extension?
> 
I'm tempted to say: please read the release notes (which can be found on 
http://www.gnucash.org ).

In short:
- Introduction of sql based data storage. Which will gradually be improved 
upon in future releases
- A new rendering engine for reports. This has the potential to greatly 
improve the functionality of the reports in future versions.
- Lots of small improvements.

Best regards,

Geert
> Thanks,


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