Question About Price DB (fwd)

[David Carlson]

That is weird.  I always click Reply List in Thunderbird.  I do not know how that happened.

David C.

--- On Tue, 2/5/13, Mike Alexander <mta at umich.edu> wrote:

From: Mike Alexander <mta at umich.edu>
Subject: Re: Question About Price DB (fwd)
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Cc: "David Carlson" <carlson.dl at sbcglobal.net>
Date: Tuesday, February 5, 2013, 12:55 PM

Please send your messages to the list.  That way others can participate 
in and benefit from the discussion.

           Mike

---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: February 5, 2013 12:34:36 PM -0600
From: David Carlson <carlson.dl at sbcglobal.net>
To: Mike Alexander <mta at umich.edu>
Subject: Re: Question About Price DB

On 2/4/2013 9:21 PM, Mike Alexander wrote:
> --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.
>
What I meant about the currency trade pop-up was that after it pops
up, I look at it and I cannot figure out what to do next to correctly
finish what I was trying to do.
>> 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.
>
All the text under "Basic Information" and under "Transfer From" and
"Transfer To" seems to have no bearing on the cryptic choices under
the "Currency Transfer" title.  Now it looks like I should decide to
use one box or the other depending on whether I want to enter "xxx
USD = yyy (Stock symbol)" or "yyy (Stock Symbol) = xxx USD".
However, in either box it seems to only accept something that has a
single value with no equals sign such as a rate or an amount or (as
you point out) an expression that reduces to a single value, but
which number does this value represent, x, y, r or 1/r?  You need two
amounts to determine the third, right? and which side of the equation
am I on (since r is implied by the units shown)?
Whatever I enter, it seems like I do not get the desired values back
to the stock purchase or sale transaction that I was trying to record.

>> 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.
>
What I meant here is that values coming from an online quote or a
manual entry are displayed in decimal form, but if they come from
this dialog, they are displayed as an integer fraction, which is
confusing to most people.  Why is it not displayed in user friendly
decimal form?  A displayed value is often not in the form actually
used to implement a computation.  As a retired programmer from
another profession I recall the hoops that I used to jump through to
use sixteen bit integer math to implement a calculation without going
out of range or dividing by zero, then converting the result to
decimal for display with a side calculation to place the decimal
point correctly.

>> 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.
>
I wasn't asking for another prompt. I was pointing out that at least
when I am entering or editing a register transaction which has a date
it is an actual trade which is not the same as an expression of value
or estimate of value at some unspecified time.  Thus I think that I am
using the actual trade values and I don't want the program to
arbitrarily change them to match a quote that I probably don't even
know about whether it exists in this particular data file or what
it's value happens to be or what time or date is associated to that
value or whether it is "Last Trade", "Bid", "Ask", "NAV" or from
which exchange or whatever.
Starting from that perspective, I want whichever prompt appears to
simply give the user the choice either to commit the numbers that the
user just entered or the values at the start of this register
transaction edit session if meaningful or tell the user what numbers
it will commit instead to this register transaction and where it got
them from.  In this case there is the possibility of a side entry or
edit to the price DB as well as the register transaction edit that
the user thinks that he is trying to make, so I would like the prompt
to tell the user when that is happening as well as what the side
edit/entry consists of. Please read my comments below.

> 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
>
>
>
Thank you Mike for taking the time to respond to my comments from your
knowledgeable perspective.  Thanks also to John R for helping me to
understand why users like me get so frustrated with an overall
excellent program that just happens to have a few 'gotchca's left in
it.

By the way, I am aware that it is possible to get to this dialog from
an incorrect entry point that can cause a stock register transaction
edit to fail before it is finally committed, and I will soon be
requesting a clarification in the manual to warn about that (see my
"Stock transaction" thread).  I believe that is a separate issue,
although it appears to overlap.
I am trying to understand how GnuCash works now before I actually ask
for any action to change either the dialogs or the program.  Do not
consider this email a request for action, but as a request for
information to help me make an informed request for action later.
I especially do not want to request any program changes at this time
that could delay the next stable program release with all the
improvements that have already accumulated since the 2.4.11 release.

I believe that GnuCash outshines all other competition in the free or
relatively inexpensive personal finance or small business finance
sectors.

David C

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