[GNC] Report updates

[Stephen M. Butler]

Aha!  Thank you.

Stephen M Butler, PMP, PSM
Stephen.M.Butler51 at gmail.com
kg7je at arrl.net
253-350-0166
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GnuPG Fingerprint:  8A25 9726 D439 758D D846 E5D4 282A 5477 0385 81D8

On 06/14/2018 11:54 AM, John Ralls wrote:
>
>> On Jun 14, 2018, at 11:24 AM, Stephen M. Butler <kg7je at arrl.net> wrote:
>>
>> What is the general policy on changes to reports?  Create a new one with
>> a new name or update the existing one?
>>
>> My wife is an accountant and she liked the formatting of the Balance
>> Sheet eguile over the standard Balance Sheet report.  But she felt it
>> was too busy with the totals and sub-totals being annotated and was
>> horrified to find the Income Statement buried inside.  So, I have hacked
>> the code to enhance those two items.
>>
>> As way of introduction, as I am new to this list.  I stated my I.T. life
>> as a COBOL developer for the first two decades (along with some hardware
>> specific other languages).  Then spent a decade as an Oracle DBA with
>> the final decade as an I.T. Development Manager with a couple of
>> development teams and a DBA in my group.  No, I don't know C or C++ nor
>> the language I hacked on while "fixing" the balance sheet (eguile)
>> report.  Nor have I used GIT.
>>
>> Yes, I am retired (spent the last 12 months no touching any code
>> whatsoever) and I am open to being led by the hand if a developer would
>> be so kind as to guide this over-the-hill-old-dog!
>>
>> And yes, I plan to hack the eguile version of the Balance Sheet to
>> create a more nicely formatted Income Statement.  So, again, is policy
>> to update the existing or create a new option on the report list?  [My
>> personal vote is to keep the list of options low and update existing --
>> but that's my background in software development].
> We're actually working on removing eguile support in favor of proper CSS stylesheets. That will make it easier to style reports to the user's liking but will not affect the contents of the report at all.
> That doesn't stop you from making an eguile Income Statement report for your wife's use, just advises that you should be aware that a future version of GnuCash will break it completely, at which point you'll have to fall back on the regular income statement report--but if styling is the concern it will be much easier.
>
> See https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Custom_Reports; there's a somewhat dated Eguile page linked off of that.
> The direct answer to your question is that you should make a new report, with a new GUID, and install it in your config directory (see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Configuration_Locations). That way upgrading GnuCash won't disturb your customizations.
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
>