Gnucash Prefs

[John Ralls]

> On Dec 16, 2015, at 7:36 AM, James Mikesell <james.mikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 1.) hope i got your email correct
> 2.) I tried to submit this to the dev mailing list through gmane.org <http://gmane.org/> however i don't know if it failed to go through, or if it got moderated etc, which is why i'm contacting you directly... Here's what i tried to post, let me know your thoughts:
> 


Do *not* write directly to developers unless expressly invited to do so. Use the mailing lists. You cannot do that directly through gmane or nabble until you have subscribed to the actual list. I've copied this reply to gnucash-user, which is the appropriate forum for users. Gnucash-devel is for technical discussions, for example if you were preparing a patch and had questions about how to integrate some feature or wanted to explore possible approaches. 

To reply you will need to subscribe at https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user <https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user>; if you prefer a web interface like gmane or nabble you can select the "no delivery" option and read the list on the web.

> 
> This is along the lines of a feature request, but bear with me...
> 
> What are the possibilities of moving the persistence of both the AqBanking preferences as well as general GnuCash prefs (saved reports, open tabs etc) so that they get persisted with the *.gnucash account file.  I realize people using SQL as a back-end etc could throw an ugly wrench into this idea.
> 
> The reason i suggest this, however, is that while the account data itself is very important, other things like saved reports, AqBanking account setups,  stock pricing data etc are also very important, and often times extremely time consuming to configure.  When trying to open an account file on a new machine, the need to find and manually copy old prefs is a bit cumbersome.  Furthermore, I could see most average users thinking that backing up their *.gnucash file as being sufficient, and then being unpleasantly surprised with the amount of things that weren't captured in their backup upon disaster recover.

AQBanking is a separate library that maintains its own state. AFAIK it does not provide an interface for overriding that. Christian Stimming, who's the AQBanking expert, may pipe up to confirm or refute that.

One reason we separate some preferences and the saved report customizations is that some users have more than one account file and want the preferences and reports to apply across files.

I don't recall any "average users" complaining that their backups of *.gnucash weren't sufficient, though the reverse is common: Being unhappy that backing up their $HOME/.gnucash didn't save their accounting data. Similarly, while we sometimes get asked how to migrate preferences and saved report customizations to a new machine, we are asked far more often how to find the account file itself.

Anyway, that's the history. We're not going to change that behavior in the current release branch, but if your suggestion sparks sufficient support on the user list then we might do it in the development release, particularly if someone steps up to write the changes.

Regards,
John Ralls