Gnucash/AqBanking Packaging

[Mike Alexander]

--On September 19, 2012 7:40:20 PM -0700 John Ralls 
<jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

>> Thanks for the reply. Sorry for mixing the two pieces up.
>>
>> Given the apparently moribund nature of F::Q (last updated in 2009
>> on SourceForge, and variants available via mailing list only), I
>> wonder whether another approach for gathering quotes might be found
>> that would require fewer additional resources.
>>
>> I know you have expressed concern about the overall size of the
>> Gnucash download, and I tend to agree.
>>
>> However, I wonder whether Python could be used for this? There are
>> HTML scraping functions in Python which might serve as starting
>> points for a Python-based F::Q. Figuring into this is the fact that
>> there are optional Python bindings that folks have wanted integrated
>> into the default Gnucash compile. Adding Python by default would
>> increase the download overall, but perhaps if integrated quote
>> retrieval were part of the deal, it would be enough benefit?
>
> If carefully written in pure python so that it's compatible with 2.5
> - 2.7, it wouldn't necessarily require adding python to the OSX
> bundle. Windows, of course, doesn't include Python, so we'd still
> have a download/package bloat issue.
>
> How about JavaScript? We're already bundling Webkit-Gtk, and that
> includes a JavaScript interpreter and all of the web paraphernalia.
> It shouldn't be too hard to write a C routine to exec a JavaScript
> program and retrieve the result.

The language it's written in is not the issue.  Maintaining the price 
quote software is a big job because the various web sites it scrapes 
for prices keep changing.  Rewriting it in Python, Javascript, or 
anything else won't help that.

            Mike