Question About Price DB

[Mike Alexander]

--On February 4, 2013 8:58:10 AM -0600 David Carlson 
<carlson.dl at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> My personal observations, you can confirm this in the code:
> The currency trade pop-up prompt that does appear when starting a
> multi-currency or security(stock) transaction edit from a "Currency"
> or "Bank" account window is very confusing.

That's hard to confirm or deny in the code.

> It uses the equals sign
> in the prompt and asks for a ratio without stating that the divide
> symbol works.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this.  If you mean that you can 
enter something like 2/3 as the exchange rate, then this is not an 
attribute of the exchange rate dialog.  You can enter an expression in 
most, if not all, numeric entry fields in GnuCash.  It doesn't have to 
be a simple ratio, something like 2*5+3/4 works too.

> Also it gives conflicting information about which
> number should be in the numerator vs which number should be in the
> denominator.

I cleaned this up a bit.

> Then it leaves the display value in integer divide form
> in the price database entry rather than decimal form.

It's always a ratio in the price DB.  If the ratio happens to have a 
denominator that is a multiple of 10 then it's displayed as a decimal 
number.

> I am not sure
> what the Fetch Rate button is supposed to do, it doesn't seem to do
> anything.

It is supposed to use Finance Quote to get a rate, but this requires 
F::Q to be set up correctly and is a bit fragile.

> I believe that the nice prompt asking whether to adjust the price,
> shares or amount pre-empts the currency trade pop-up when the
> transaction edit is started from the security asset account window and
> then the price DB entry code inadvertently gets skipped, probably
> because it is mixed in with the currency trade prompt generating
> code.

Yes, that's correct.

> Also, in my opinion the price DB entry in either case should
> ask the user whether to take the price  just manually entered (as if
> this is a record of an actual transaction rather than a value
> estimate based on a quote) or to take the last recorded quote price
> from the price database as it currently does. If the choice is not
> given it should at least declare that the last recorded quote price
> will be used.

The exchange rate dialog (but not the stock transaction register) is 
always prepopulated with a price from the price DB (except for an 
existing transaction that already has an exchange rate).  With my 
recent changes it also always adds the new price to the DB unless there 
is an equivalent price on the same day.  I'm not sure another prompt 
here would be worth the annoyance.

               Mike