Compression

[Alex Aycinena]

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU>
> To: Alex Aycinena <alex.aycinena at gmail.com>
> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org, Fred.Bone at dial.pipex.com
> Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:13:00 -0500
> Subject: Re: Compression
> Alex Aycinena <alex.aycinena at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> That message you got ("This file/URL appears to be from a newer
>> version of GnuCash. You must upgrade your version of GnuCash to work
>> with this data.") is from an update I put in just recently. You don't
>> say but, because of this, I assume you are using gnucash version
>> 2.4.10 on your Windows platform. However, I don't understand why you
>> would get that particular message under these circumstances.
>
> This begs the question:  why was this code back-ported to 2.4 when we
> already had the feature-table backported to 2.4?  We should've just kept
> this code in 2.6 and we could use the feature table to signify to 2.4
> that the file cannot be loaded.

That is not the way I remember the discussion we had several weeks
ago. Geert was trying to decide whether to implement the credit memo
feature by using a new xml tag or by using kvp's. The feature table
relates to how a version of gnucash out in the wild would deal with a
gnucash file created by a later version that may or may not contain
kvp's it could not recognize. It was important to get this capability
out in the installed base so that existing gnucashes could read later
versions of files that did not use the new feature but would handle
the case of a file that did use a new feature without inadvertent data
loss. I believe John implemented that feature.

In the same discussion it was agreed that I would apply my code which
handles a different situation. If a new xml tag is introduced (which
Geert was considering but didn't do), gnucash would previously detect
that and give the user a cryptic message and not load the file. What
my code does is to simply provide a more useful message in this case
if, as the new tag is implemented the the gnc-version number is bumped
up as well. Like the feature table, we want that out in the installed
base as soon as possible so that new xml-tags that may be implemented
in the future are handled better by existing deployed gnucashes.

>
> Clearly this code hasn't been tested enough...  (No Offense)
>

None taken but I disagree; it is impossible to test every conceivable
situation. There was a bug I introduced which Fred has helped me
locate and patch. I aspire to someday write absolutely bug-free code
as you must do (No Offense).

>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
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>
> -derek
>
> --
>       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>

Alex