[GNC] Scheduled transactions cannot be processed if first in list has not had variable completed.

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 12/28/2024 3:10 AM, sunfish62--- via gnucash-user wrote:
> I'll simply chime in to confirm David's reply and Richard's observation. The "all or nothing" approach here is counterintuitive and unhelpful. I've generally avoided using variable based scheduled transactions for this reason. It's another of GnuCash's features (like lots) that I've decided is better in concept than in execution.
>
To be fair to the development team, we should only expect the built in 
scheduler of an application like this to handle simple, straightforward 
schedules.

Back in my working days, one of the PROGRAMS* I maintained was the "next 
event" calculator << what are the next scheduled dates for each event 
that has a schedule (in the life of this insurance policy) and which of 
these is next (soonest -- set policy to schedule that >> LOL, yes we had 
tools to help with Y2K, but in this programs of ~10,000 lines about 1500 
of the involved date computations so a tool that was ~98% correct in Y2K 
conversion would have meant about 30 bugs! So I did the Y2K changes for 
this program entirely by hand.

The point is, an event scheduled for the 20th of each month is 
straightforward/easy. But an event scheduled for third Thursday of the 
month provided that is after the !6th of the month, otherwise fourth 
Thursday less so, and one for last day of the month, except if that 
falls on a weekend/holiday, the last business day before even more 
complicated (think February and Leap Years.

Michael D Novack

* called routine -- after each activity on a policy processed, call this 
to find next event; if tonight, do that activity, otherwise schedule to 
bring the policy back on that date.