Split transactions are killing me

[Will]

> Regarding your tangible critiques, bug 692957 ought to provide assistance
down the line for people walking through chapter 4 of the tutorial; it adds
a specific note explaining the need to use Tab vs. Enter. So, people looking
at Chapter 4 of the Tutorial will have the information provided in Chapter
8,

A person looking for information in Section 4 is not going to assume the
information they truly need is embedded in some unrelated section of the
documentation, so this will not help the overwhelming number of users
needing to know how to add a split.

> and the other bug adds a similar note to Chapter 6 of the Help manual.
> That should cover the circumstances you raised.

> I have also added bug 692961 to modify section 6.3 of the Tutorial (for
> credit cards) to refer readers to the sections elsewhere that cover
> transaction entry.

Section 6.3 needs a detailed example of a credit card split (if one is not
provided soon in section 4). The one in section 6 now focuses on a refund of
an item, and does not impart the kind of detail someone doing a credit card
split would need.

>And I honestly don't understand why the split transaction example doesn't
work for you. (Just to be sure--you *are* referring to section 4.2.2 of the
Tutorial, yes?)

If you sat 20 people unfamiliar with GnuCash (or other personal finance
software) down and asked them to each to do a split of 3 items in a credit
card transaction, I'm willing to believe that 18 or 19 of them would have a
problem. And seeing as the documentation does not say "enter the first line,
picking an account that one item in the split will be assigned to, enter the
total charge, but then hit SPLIT. After that, hit TAB to move to new lines
and new fields (Don't hit ENTER until the transaction is complete)", then
the chances of them randomly hitting upon the correct sequence of steps is
close to zero. 

>As I see it, this steps through a multi-split transaction; 

At a level insufficient to achieve the level of detail I mentioned above.

>the fact that the example is for a paycheck rather than a credit card
transaction is (or should be) immaterial.

What percentage of the user base is actually going to split out all of the
items for each paycheck? Probably quite small.

What percentage of the user base is going to split out all of the items for
a credit card split? A very high one.  Have experienced users in this thread
shown that they had the entry fields backwards, confirming the need for a
concrete example? Yes. How much clearer does it have to be?

I'm trying to provide constructive criticism - please don't be defensive
about the current state of the documentation, user feedback should be
considered golden.

Once I become somewhat proficient with GnuCash, if I select this as the
family personal finance software suite, I would feel comfortable writing
documentation. Having made one successful pass at a split does not yet
qualify me for that role.



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