[GNC] Any reason reports are not stored in gnucash file ?

[Adrien Monteleone]

That is interesting.

If I am not mistaken, you can presently put a *custom* report in any 
directory as long as you tell the config-usr.scm file where they are. 
(note, *custom* means an entirely separate report template, not just a 
saved-configuration, these would be reports that aren't in the default 
GnuCash installation at all.)

With that in mind, consider what might seem like a complication at 
first, but would perhaps be more versatile to cover more use cases:

Presently, the saved-configurations are saved in a single Scheme file 
labeled "saved-reports-2.8". It is simply the various preferences for 
each report listed one after the other, by report. (easily viewable in 
any basic text editor)

I propose, those be stored in individual files per report with either 
the book file, the gcm, or a book-tied 'saved-configurations' file 
pointing to them *wherever they may reside in the file tree*. (just like 
Custom Reports)

This would allow easy copying of preferences -per report- to other 
books. (You may want the same P&L prefs for two books, but not the other 
configs)

Things could be kept tidy with a default folder for them, but ideally, 
the user should be able to store them anywhere, like they can with 
Custom Reports.

These individual pref files for saved-configurations could either be 
stored in the default config directory or with the Book files, at the 
user's discretion since they will be pointed to regardless.

It would also be nice if these were XML or JSON so as to be a bit more 
accessible to us mere mortals than Scheme, but I certainly appreciate 
that might be asking too much. I don't speak Scheme, but looking at the 
present saved-reports file, I can at least get a sense of what is going 
on generally. (I'm guessing if the format were not Scheme, something 
would have to translate them a bit rather than just 'insert/include' as 
is likely happening now, or that insertion/include code would have to be 
more complicated than it is presently.)


Regards,
Adrien

On 10/13/25 6:13 PM, Stan Brown (using GC 4.14) wrote:
> Rather than store them in the book (main data file), why not in the GCM
> file, which already holds configurations of registers, the general
> journal, and the Accounts tab? That information is already on a per-book
> basis, one GCM file per book file. And then there would be no collision
> with the data file's present auto-save logic.
> 
> Or the saved report configurations could be stored in a {book}.reports
> file in the books directory. Then import and export would require no
> code at all; the user would simply copy {book1.reports} to {book2}.reports.