multiple display of the same transaction

[gnucash-user at rainbowdreams.com]

> When a transaction that has more than one split for the
> same account is viewed in that account's register, one
> sees the transaction displayed multiple times.

My frequently used scenario for this is for detailed expense tracking. Say I 
spend $100 at my local purveyor of music and video and I buy 5 DVD's for $20 
each. I could just record this as "$100 spent to Expenses:DVDs" but it's nice 
to also take a little extra time and get an inventory too at the same time. If 
I do it in one transaction with splits, then when I look in Expenses:DVDs I 
have 5 splits recorded with the right amounts but the description is the same 
for all of them ("Local purveyor of music and video") rather than the split 
description of "Really cool movie" or "TV show I'm ashamed to admit 
purchasing". That's with the Basic Ledger view. Journal view of course shows 
me all of the splits and not just the splits posted to the account being 
viewed.

My easy solution has been to create a "Line item expenses" account to record 
the $100 spent at "Local purveyor of music and video" followed by 5 separate 
transactions for the individual items into the Expenses:DVDs account (and 
whereever else the money goes.). It's an extra step, but gives me nice 
descriptions in the expense account. It also gets around the "annoyance" of 
trying to work around remembered splits which seem to never quite be close 
enough to what I want to reuse yet useful enough to not want to clear and 
start over.

This has actually annoyed me enough in the past to have experimented with the 
code (2.2? maybe 2.4?) to try to change the register view to show the split 
description when there was one and the transaction description when there 
wasn't one. I think I got it mostly working, but still had some issues and 
don't remember if I got an option created to let user decide which way to 
show.

Maybe I should track the code down and try to get it working with latest code 
... then post to gnucash-devel? someone can advise on fixing the horrible 
hatchet job I did.  <grin>