[GNC] Nesting too deep for budget?

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2020 31 Jan 15:17 -0600, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
> Nate,
> 
> 
> First, the budget by default, I don’t think, shows any ‘cells’ like
> you would think of them in a spreadsheet. You can turn on faint grey
> lines here by going to Preferences > General > General and then
> checking off the two options to “Enable horizontal/vertical grid lines
> on table displays”. This may also show the grid lines in other places
> you may not want, so toggle as needed. 

Thanks Adrien.

> Note also, you have to double-click where the cells are supposed to be
> to get the entry field. There is a way to tab/enter around the table,
> but it is quite cumbersome.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Well.  That was totally NOT described in the manual.  At least not in
the Gudgets chapter.  Everywhere else in GC there is a defined grid and
an obvious entry box and in this form, NOTHING?  Sorry, I am venting a
bit as this is a severe UI deviation and had me frustrated enough that I
went out and got the mail!

> It does not play nice like a spreadsheet app.
> 
> Second, the column order in the Budget module should be
> 
> Accounts 1st period 2nd period ...  Total
> 
> The dates of those periods are determined by how you set up the
> budget, which can be changed with the ‘Options’ toolbar button.
> 
> So the first column has account names.
> 
> The second and subsequent columns are for each period.
> 
> If you enter amounts in the child accounts, the parent cells will show
> the sum of those entries in a grey font.
> 
> You *could* enter amounts for the parents, but in this case you don’t
> want to.
> 
> Also, be aware that parent accounts (maybe only those set as
> placeholders, I don’t recall) Will show “0.00” in light grey font for
> any parts of the tree that don’t have entries yet. But the child
> accounts will have nothing there in the cell. The cell will be
> completely blank. And if you don’t have the grid lines turned on, that
> row will look like a blank, white (empty) row. But just double-click
> where you think the cell ought to be and you’ll get the entry field.

I suppose there is a sound reason why only a parent account shows a
total of 0.00 and leaf accounts are completely blank, but I fail to see
it.  I'm hardly a newbie when it comes to GUIs and such.  As I am doing
a yearly budget I have three columns and I had double-clicked/pressed
Enter on the "Account Name" and "Total" columns as there are characters
in those columns.  It never occurred to me to try double-clicking the
completely blank "01/01/2020" column for the leaf accounts row!

Regardless, I think this really needs to be a tip in the manual's
Budgets chapter and given the rest of the UI, this was NOT intuitive at
all.

> The Filter settings are not remembered. You have to reset them each
> time you open the Budget. I think there is a bug filed on this
> already.

In fact, it seems as though the subsequent times that it is opened that
the filter is ineffective.  I didn't play with it extensively, however.

Thanks for you patient answers, Adrien.  GC is helping me so much that
this UI inconsistency really was unexpected and threw me for a loop
especially with parent accounts showing values and the leaf accounts
being blank.

I am on my way, now.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

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