Associating Saved Reports and Preferences with Data File.

[Bob Taylor]

I have already made it clear, but will repeat my opinion All preferences and custom reports should be associated with the data file. 

My workaround seems to work pretty well.  It has several drawbacks though.  
1.  Each company file (or personal) must be set up.  This is tricky.  The path must be correct (backslashes must be changed to slashes) or the program defaults to "C:\Documents and Settings\user-id\Application Data".
2.  To move a file would also be messy.
3.  Occasionally the preferences are not picked up.  I think this is a timing problem.  It happens only occasionally and closing the file and reopening fixes it.
4.  The file must always be opened with a batch file, i.e. you can't use recent documents or history.  This is not much problem, except:
5.  you must be careful when opening a backup file.  (This, by the way, is the very bestest feature of GC.)
6.  Opening multiple instances of GC is also tricky.  The second instance shares preferences with the first.   However, they have separate custom reports.

Regards, Bob Taylor


Derek Atkins wrote:
> Mike Evans <mikee at saxicola.idps.co.uk> writes:
> 
>> Would having a different GCONF_PATH for each account be contrary to
>> any gconf standards?  This would provide a way to associate an account
>> with preferences settings perhaps.  
>>
>> .gconf/apps/gnucash_accname
>>
>> Wouldn't solve the .gnucash\saved-reports-2.4 issue though.
> 
> I personally have not thought about how one would implement something
> like this.  I think Phil did start looking at it, but he's been busy
> recently.
> 
> Note that we have Edit -> Preferences and File -> Properties currently,
> so we do have "per user" and "per datafile" prefs currently.  We just
> don't have per-user-per-datafile prefs, nor do we have per-data-file
> data for some other saved data (e.g. saved reports, qif-import-map)
> 
> One thing that would be useful would be going through all the
> preferences and determining which category it belongs in.  I do believe
> that there still are some things that should be per-user, such as #
> register lines, colors, etc.  I believe this inventory can be done by a
> non-developer.  Any takers?
> 
>> Just a thought.
>>
>> Mike E
> 
> -derek
>