> Christopher Browne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > Actually, that's _rather_ good.
> >
> > It puts it into the same terms as debit cards and credit cards,
> > which is something that it _is_ reasonable to expect people to have
> > _some_ feel for.
>
> Thanks, though actually as Buddha mentioned, my description only
> really applies from one perspective, though it may be one of the more
> common ones for the naive user who's not going to be doing anything
> particularly fancy...
Like I said, my major objection was that it placed a value on debits
and credits (the former "good", the latter "bad") which ignored the
realities of double-entry bookkeeping.
> I think taking what he said, and maybe adding what I said as a simple
> example of the checking account case might do the trick. We should
> probably work some flavor of all this into the docs...
Feel free to use whatever I write in the docs all if you feel it is
appropriate. Edit if you need to. I consider any messages I send to
Free Software mailing lists to be licensed under any applicable Free
Software License. Credit would be nice.
..........
I think that from a user perspective, trying to tie "debit" to debts,
"credit" to creditors, trying to imagine the bank's point of view, etc,
is a bit of a lost cause. After all, even accountants say that "debit"
and "credit" are abstractions these days, not really tied in with their
original historical meaning.
In my opinion, the "destination/source" model is probably easier to
understand. The left column is where money goes, the "destination".
The right column is where money comes from, the "source". And this
works for every transaction that most users might come across. It also
leads to easy-to-remember column headings that work for most registers:
"To", and "From".
>
> --
> Rob Browning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930
--
Buddha Buck [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our
liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech
the First Amendment protects." -- A.L.A. v. U.S. Dept. of Justice
