Invoice - Custom Design Header for No. 9 Double Window Envelope

[Geert Janssens]

On Saturday 21 March 2015 10:57:06 L. D. James wrote:
> On 03/21/2015 10:28 AM, Geert Janssens wrote:
> > As said earlier, the developers are well aware the reporting system
> > in general needs a big overhaul. Unfortunately so do other parts of
> > the code and developer time is limited. Hence it was decided to
> > first focus on modernizing the core and continue from there to the
> > gui and the report system. The report system is on the list, but it
> > will take a few years given the current developer's time and
> > availability.
> It appears that you might have some type of connection (or
> communication-ability) with the developers/development.

That's one way of putting it. As one of the developers I do have some 
type of connection there indeed ;)

> I hope to
> develop some connection also so that I can follow the development,
> priorities, and feature requests being considered.

This is mostly discussed on the gnucash-devel mailing list. If you are 
interested in these topics, feel free to subscribe to that list as well. 
It is also the preferred place to ask development related questions if 
you come across any while working on your customized template.

> One feature
> request that could probably go a long way is to develop some type of
> plugin system to make it easier for others to contribute to various
> aspects.

Actually gnucash does have a plugin system. It has generally proven to 
be more trouble than benefit for lots of reasons ranging from harder to 
understand to higher risk of data loss. So we are planning to reduce the 
use of plugins where they don't make sense. The infrastructure itself 
won't go away though so can still be used to write optional extensions.

> Report formating would be a good area to allow plugins from
> the community.  With community shared plugins, while it appears we
> have a wealth of expertise in this maillist sharing their skills,
> workarounds and tips, the plugins would spare a lot of us from having
> to continue to reinvent the wheel.

I do see some value in some kind of repository for user made reports or 
even report layouts. Custom reports and layouts are relatively easy to 
implement (starting from existing reports and layouts).

Plugins that add functionality are much more challenging though 
particularly if you want these to work cross-platform. Remember we do 
support Linux, OS X and Windows.

Geert