Sort transactions by date within a day

[Derek Atkins]

Dear GTI,

GT-I9070 H <gti9070h at gmail.com> writes:

> 2015-06-23 3:38 GMT-04:00 Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com>:
>
>>
>> I’ve been following this thread with some puzzlement, but now I think I
>> know what you want!
>>
>
> First I would like to make it clear that in the first post  I asked: IF IT
> WAS POSSIBLE and not I WANT.

In English the distinction is minimal.  Saying "you want" often connotes
"you are searching for" which implies "is it possible?"  So when Michael
was summarizing your requests he used the shorter "you want ..." instead
of the more pedantically accurate "you are looking for...".

There is no need to raise your voice; I think we all understand that
you're not demanding these features, you're asking if it can be done (in
short: no).

>> 1. You want to have a dedicated field within a transaction which holds the
>> date and time when you entered the transaction.
>>
> No. It would add the time in the Date field that already exists to be used
> for ordering purposes.

There is no time in the Posted Date field.

>> 1. Extend Gnucash to provide these features (a: write the code yourself b:
>> pay someone else to do it c: persuade the (volunteer) developers that these
>> are important modifications, needed by many users).
>> 2. Devise a way of using existing fields within Gnucash to achieve what
>> you want.
>>
> I know this and have thought of all these alternatives. Maybe you could
> help persuade a dev to help us, or you do not like these improvements ???

There is a split community between whether or not the Posted Date should
be a Posted Timestamp.  On the one hand, some people (like yourself) do
care about the actual time of the transaction (for many purposes;
sorting is only one of them).  On the other hand, as soon as you add a
time to the Posted Date it raises TONS of UI questions, like:

 * What is the default if the user doesn't care?
 * How does this behave when the system changes timezones?

I'll note that the second issue already exists precisely because there
*is* a timestamp (internally) in the way GnuCash stores the Posted Date.
It always chooses a fixed time (midnight) on the day in question.  This
is one reason there has been an effort to change this over to using
GDate, because then we fix the "dates all change when the system
timezone changes".

>> Apparently you’ve tried 2. by using work-arounds, and haven’t succeeded.
>>
> Yes.
>
>>
>> It’s always helpful to strip a request for help down to its essentials -
>> you may even find that stating your question clearly allows you to see the
>> answer yourself.
>>
> I did not understand well this English!

Michael is saying that it can help us to help you if you break down your
question into its bare essentials, talk about your actual requirements
instead of jumping to solutions.

For example, I'd take it even more and say: you want a way to
specifically order transactions within a day regardless of the order in
which you enter them into GnuCash.  Personally I don't think you need to
use a timestamp in the Posted Date to solve this problem.  Yes, it is
one possible solution, but it's not the ONLY solution.

So I would ask you to rephrase this query: Do you need a timestamp
because you need a timestamp?  Or are you asking for a timestamp because
you think it's the only way you could order transactions within a day?

Let's ignore the internal "Date Entered" timestamp.  While it is used
for ordering, it cannot go away even if you do add a timestamp to the
Posted Date.  The reason is that for auditing purposes it is important
to know exactly when you entered a transaction, in a addition to when
the transaction should be posted to the account.

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available