[GNC] Cannot change preferences -- see bug 555187?

[Ken Heard]

On 2018-08-17 03:27, Geert Janssens wrote:
> Actually as of gnucash 2.6 the preferences are managed via GSettings. On linux
> this means the settings are stored in dconf by default. We had a few cases
> early on where gnucash was installed on systems that didn't have dconf
> installed. In that case GSettings will only store settings in-memory and they
> will be reset each time you restart gnucash.
> 
> A few things to check:
> 1. Is dconf running properly on your system ?
> 2. can you edit the gnucash preferences using dconf-editor ? In the editor the
> gnucash preferences are found under /org/gnucash
> 3. When you try to alter a preference via gnucash, are there any messages in
> the gnucash trace file [1] ?
> 
> Finally as for the choice of account tree separator, you can choose anything
> you like. Full account names are not file names so there is no interference
> whatsoever between gnucash' interpretation of account names and the system's
> file management.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Geert
> 
> [1] http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Tracefile
> 
> Op vrijdag 17 augustus 2018 03:55:55 CEST schreef Adrien Monteleone:
>> Ken, always use reply-all or reply-to-list so that others can participate in
>> the conversation and offer assistance.
>>
>> I can’t get to the specifics at the moment for the preference permissions
>> issue, but maybe someone else can in the interim.
>>
>> Your preferences I think should be stored in ~/.gnucash or a .gnucash
>> directory that is a sub of ~/.config or ~/.local. (I don’t recall exactly)
>> The FAQ on the website should have the details of where this is stored.
>> (this changed recently with version 3.0, so be certain you are referencing
>> info for the version you have installed)
>>
>> Regards,
>> Adrien
>>
>>> On Aug 16, 2018, at 6:49 PM, Ken Heard <kenslists at teksavvy.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Adrien,
>>>
>>> Thank you for your reply.  It arrived in my inbox just before I left
>>> Canada for France.  I returned to Canada yesterday and saw it for the
>>> first time today.>
>>> On 2018-07-26 02:11, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
>>>> Ken,
>>>> Sorry, I saw this when you originally posted it (twice) but wasn’t able
>>>> to reply at the time and I see you haven’t heard from anyone yet.
>>>> Although seemingly unhelpful, the error message is telling you how to
>>>> fix the problem. Apparently, after changing the separator to a backslash
>>>> “\” (which is also a file path separator in Windows, not a safe choice!)
>>>> you named about 50 accounts to include the old path separator “:” as
>>>> part of the actual name. If you re-institute the “:” as path separator,
>>>> GnuCash is going to freak out because it will appear you have a bunch of
>>>> new accounts that don’t exist yet. (and likely attempt at some point to
>>>> get you to create them as you tab/enter through transactions, if not
>>>> just totally blow up or freeze as it seems to have done.) The solution
>>>> is to FIRST, change all of your accounts names to NOT use “:” in the
>>>> name itself, perhaps substituting hyphen “-“ or something reasonably
>>>> similar. (Commas are unsafe choices also due to CSV import/export issues
>>>> with various software - you don’t want to deal with comma delimited
>>>> files if fields contain commas themselves unless specially handled)>
>>> Yes, today I did remove all the colons in the names and codes of my
>>> account which had them.  Now when I open GnuCash the list of account
>>> names and codes does not appear.  I still however have another problem,
>>> see below.>
>>>> Once you’ve eliminated all instances of “:” in your account names, then
>>>> the error/warning won’t appear and you can change the account separator
>>>> back to it. As long as you stick to a single OS, you can choose to use
>>>> either \, or / accordingly for separators, but commas are usually bad
>>>> news. (Windows uses backslashes for file paths and *nix uses
>>>> backslashes) Pipes and periods even can be an issue, though more rarely
>>>> so. (Pipes redirect output and periods are usually extension separators,
>>>> but this only an issue in Windows)>
>>> I only use Linux, currently the Stretch iteration of Debian; so I would
>>> use only the backslash.  For the reason which you state using a slash --
>>> or pipes or periods -- is not wise.  I think that if I were to abandon
>>> the colon -- which I may not do in any event -- I would use the tilde,
>>> single or double.  I would never use those symbols in an account name or
>>> code.>
>>>> That really limits things a bit. But you can likely safely use hyphen
>>>> “-“, underscore”_”, semi-colon “;”, tilde “~”, middle dot “•”, small
>>>> middle dot “·”, double left arrow “«”, double right arrow “»”,
>>>> equivalent “≈”, diamond “◊”, en-dash “–“, and em-dash “—“. (those last
>>>> two are sometimes indistinguishable from each other or even from hyphen
>>>> in some fonts) On that note, while you’re replacing your copious use of
>>>> “:” as part of account names, consider hyphens “-“ and underscores “_”
>>>> as replacements. Some coding conventions use underscores to separate
>>>> words—e.g., “camel_case” instead of "camelCase", and hyphens to
>>>> indicated sub-levels or more specific information—e.g.,
>>>> “Rent-Apartment_A” and "Rent-Apartment_B". I too experimented with other
>>>> separators, but found the colon to be a well thought out default as it
>>>> is easy to quickly step through the account hierarchy one letter and
>>>> colon at a time. Other choices are farther away and harder to tap
>>>> easily. (some of the above suggestions require 3rd & 4th level modifier
>>>> keys) Also, muscle memory is a consideration. Regards,
>>>> Adrien
>>>
>>> Now the other problem I referred to above, and which I also mentioned in
>>> my original post, is that I cannot change GnuCash preferences.  I think I
>>> am not mistaken in assuming that the file containing the preferences
>>> chosen is in directory ~/gconf/apps/gnucash/dialogues/preferences.  The
>>> only file in that directory is %gconf.xml, only 333 B but is dated in
>>> 2014.  All the permissions seem to be correct, drwxr-x--- for me, my
>>> group and for others.  I would appreciate help on restoring ability to
>>> set my own preferences.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Ken
------------------------------------------------------------------
Last evening I was thinking of filing a bug report for my problem.  In 
the process I found a previous bug report 555187 dealing with the same 
one (1).  This bug was originally filed on 2008-10-16, but the last 
comment on it by André Klapper was filed on 2018-08-17 13:58:19 UTC -- 
yesterday!

I looked at the two URLs mentioned in his second paragraph. 
Unfortunately I am not up to understanding them -- or knowing whether 
they have any relevance to my problem.

Surely however if some basic change was made to preferences 
modifications just before my last migration in April 2018, there must be 
something to replace directory ~/.gconf. The gnucash version I have in 
Thailand is 2.6.4-2; the one I have now in Canada is 2.6.15-1; so 
perhaps there was such a change.

On a hunch yesterday evening I purged gnucash 2.6.15-1 and reinstalled 
it. It made no difference; I still cannot open and change preferences.

Regards, Ken

(1) https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=555187#c2