cvs 2000-05-08
Dave Peticolas writes: CVS has been updated. New Stuff: + Applied Rob Browning's patch to break out g-wrap. NOTE 1: Before you update, remove src/guile/gnucash.h You can also delete lib/g-wrap, lib/g-wrap-install, and lib/g-wrap.configure. NOTE 2: You will need to install the g-wrap module, available at: ftp://ftp.gnucash.org/pub/g-wrap/g-wrap-0.9.1.tar.gz You only need g-wrap if you are compling from source. I'm building a g-wrap .deb, an experimental one should be available RSN. Robert Merkel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Getting people to read the docs
It's been rumoured that Jan Schrage said: Hi everyone, from a number of discussions during the last two or three weeks I am getting the impression that a number of people don't bother to read the docs accompanying gnucash, whatever the reason. Personally I suspect that as long as the clicking works people tend to think they're getting their accounts right, too, which in general seems not to be the case. Now my proposal would be to=20 1) rename Help-Help to Help-Documentation in the menus to make it clear that this is not a sort of last resort help facility. 2) Check if ~/.gnucash exists and if not, pop up a box right at the beginning that suggests to people to actually read these docs before they start fiddling around. I like the ideas ... I'd add 3) a 'did-you-know/hint-of-the-day' dialogue. the gimp pops up one of these, every time you start it up. real handy. after a few doxen start ups, you can really start learning stuff ... --linas
Re: Budgeting
It's been rumoured that Bryan Larsen said: 2. What is the current state of progress? the todo list looks like: ;; TODO ;; "upcoming/overdue bills" report Any sort of cleverness here, or will you simply look at the system clock when gnucash is started up ... ? ;; save/load budget How do you plan to store the data? Any ideas yet? In a separate file? Do you have to store pointers to any existing transactions? Or have you discovred a way of wedging this into the current file format (possibly slightly modified?) ;; graph budget progress when you go to graph budget progress, you will need to compute the data to graph. Is this going to be a module in the engine, or will it be some scheme snippet? More importantly, *should* it be in the engine? The following may sound heretical to some, but: I occasionally think about what it would take to put a www/cgi-bin interface on gnucash, so you could use it entirely from a browser. Where would I slice gnucash so that I could do this? Clearly, at the engine would be low enough; could I slice it higher somewhere? where? how? This is a hard question, but one that is worth keeping in mind when new features, such as budgeting come in. In general, is it time to create some plug-in infrastructure for the 'engine', where we define 'engine' as having to do with 'saving and restoring from disk', and 'non-gui operations and manipulations' ? --linas
Re: Build problems under Solaris/Sparc
It's been rumoured that Keith Refson said: Sorry to intrude on a developer's list, but it seems to be the only one there is. I am trying to build gnucash o1.3.6 on a Sun Ultrasparc. I have almost got the build to work (after problems finding and with modes of g-wrap-guile), but there is one remaining problem I can't solve. The build fails with: gmake[3]: Entering directory `/home/keith/src/gnucash-1.3.6/src/g-wrap' rm -f *.wrap g-wrap-guile gnc.gwp ERROR: In expression (cdr lst): ERROR: Stack overflow I vaguely remember that stack-overflow problems were indicative of old versions of guile. ? Not sure ... --linas
(offtopic) help needed to build g-wrap deb
This isn't strictly gnucash stuff, but as we have several Debian developers on the list and it's important for the build hopefully somebody can help Anyway . . . I had a go at building a g-wrap package using debhelper. Unfortunately, when installing the package, I get the following error message: Setting up g-wrap (0.9.1-1) ... No `START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY' and no `This file documents'. install-info: unable to determine description for `dir' entry - giving up dpkg: error processing g-wrap (--install): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: g-wrap Presumably, this means that something needs to be added to the texinfo file, but does anybody have any idea what? -- Robert Merkel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Budgeting
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ;; TODO ;; "upcoming/overdue bills" report Any sort of cleverness here, or will you simply look at the system clock when gnucash is started up ... ? I vote for the simplest implementation which works without precluding expansion; bells and whistles such as mailing out reminders can be added on later. ;; save/load budget How do you plan to store the data? Any ideas yet? In a separate file? Do you have to store pointers to any existing transactions? Or have you discovred a way of wedging this into the current file format (possibly slightly modified?) Preferably in the same file, although there are now so many files in my gnucash data files directory that I suppose it doesn't really matter... Ben.
Re: Budgeting
How do you plan to store the data? Any ideas yet? In a separate file? Do you have to store pointers to any existing transactions? Or have you discovred a way of wedging this into the current file format (possibly slightly modified?) Preferably in the same file, although there are now so many files in my gnucash data files directory that I suppose it doesn't really matter... Right now, you can delete everything but the main gnucash data file. The .xac files are backup files created each time you save. You can safely delete the older ones. You can also delete the .log files. The budget stuff will be stored in a separate file, probably in scheme forms which will be fairly easy to write out and read back in. Storing the budget in the main file is problematic, as it means the main file format has to change everytime the budget format changes. This is a lot riskier than storing it separately. dave
cvs 2000-05-09
CVS has been updated. New Stuff: + If no filename is specified on the command-line, open the last file the user opened in the past. dave
Re: Budgeting
On Tue, 09 May 2000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's been rumoured that Bryan Larsen said: 2. What is the current state of progress? the todo list looks like: ;; TODO ;; "upcoming/overdue bills" report Any sort of cleverness here, or will you simply look at the system clock when gnucash is started up ... ? I hadn't planned on hooking into the start up, just generating a report when the user asks for one. ;; save/load budget How do you plan to store the data? Any ideas yet? In a separate file? Do you have to store pointers to any existing transactions? Or have you discovred a way of wedging this into the current file format (possibly slightly modified?) It'll be stored in a seperate file in S-expression format when I get told where to put the file. Somebody is working on this, i forget who. ;; graph budget progress when you go to graph budget progress, you will need to compute the data to graph. Is this going to be a module in the engine, or will it be some scheme snippet? More importantly, *should* it be in the engine? Not a problem. The total at the bottom of the budget report is the number that we graph. I'll just generate the equivalent of several reports over different time periods and graph that Bryan - Bryan Larsen, Senior Software Engineer fall guy Phone: 306 664 2087 x29. Fax: 306 664 4446 Analog Design Automation: Analog Circuit Synthesis? Problem Solved.
Re: Budgeting
The budget stuff will be stored in a separate file, probably in scheme forms which will be fairly easy to write out and read back in. Storing the budget in the main file is problematic, as it means the main file format has to change everytime the budget format changes. This is a lot riskier than storing it separately. Unless it could be encapsulated somehow, but that's going down the track of embedded data formats, which I seem to remember were previously debunked on this group. I wrote a versioned portable binary file format which would have coped with this problem quite easily to support my PhD work. It would allow one part of the file format to be revised without doing any damage to the rest of the dat I designed it this way because I was constantly adding features to my program and I *had* to maintain backward compatibility so as not to lose access to ol data sets. However, I didn't consider robustness against file corruption when designed it, which is an important consideration here. That's very interesting. For now, what we're going to do is use the file system for something similar. Instead of one data file, there will be a directory containing the main data file, as well as auxiliary files like backups, logs, budgets, etc. But there will be an api that would allow something like you describe to be implemented instead. dave
Re: Budgeting
On Tue, 09 May 2000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's been rumoured that Bryan Larsen said: 2. What is the current state of progress? the todo list looks like: ;; TODO ;; "upcoming/overdue bills" report Any sort of cleverness here, or will you simply look at the system clock when gnucash is started up ... ? I hadn't planned on hooking into the start up, just generating a report when the user asks for one. This seems like a problem for recurring transactions to solve. dave
Re: QIF Importer Category mapping
hab [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My personal experience from GNUCash 1.3.4-1.3.7 is that it is always the third option. Even though the ~/.gnucash/qif-accounts-map is in existence and seems to have the historical mappings. Is this the correct operation? Or what could be causing my problems. That's absolutely not the correct operation. If that's the way it's working, there's something broken in there. I'll have a look today. b.g.
Re: on-line banking qif import
Linas Vepstas [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sooo (sound of lightbulb turning on) isn't the right way to import QIF files is to run them through a reconcile-like dialogue? That's a great idea for the "last step" of *some* QIF imports. I think the most common usage of the QIF importer is still a mass import from old Quicken records, which doesn't need such a reconciliation step. However, as you point out, downloading short snippets of QIF from the bank is a pretty common operation, and for this case we need a way of comparing the transactions that are being imported with already-existing transactions so as to match up QIF imported ones with ones you entered from your checkbook. Anyone out there using gnucash and also looking at thier bank-staements on-line? What do y'all think? I'd be interested to hear a more detailed description of how that might work. It seems like you would still need the step of mapping QIF accounts to GNUcash accounts, but would just add a "pruning" dialog which would let you match a QIF transaction with an existing GNUcash transaction or just import it if you hadn't entered that transaction by hand. Bill Gribble
Re: Register change in 1.3.7
On the other hand, if I could get a "sort order" option on the reconcile window so that I could make it match the ordering on my bank statements, I would be just overjoyed...:) Let me ask how you see this working. So you want to reorder them by hand, right? Would you need to see the order again later, or just while you were reconciling? No, I don't want to reorder them by hand. A simple "sort order" menu like the register window has would suffice. Both my wife and I write checks on the account, using two different checkbooks. As a result, if you sort the checks by date (as does the reconcile window), they will be out of order numerically. To reconcile things against what the bank thinks, I have to pass through the list three or four times. If, instead, things were listed in item number order (with unnumbered items at one end or the other) like "that other program" did, reconciliation would be quite a bit quicker. jon Jonathan Corbet Executive editor, LWN.net [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Misleading Message/Bug
I am using gnucash-1.3.7 When I specify a file on the command line with a non-existent path, I get the "...appears to be in use by another user ... remove .LCK file..." message box instead of the "...could not be found" message box that appears if the path is valid, but the file doesn't exist. Best regards, Scott Wilburn
Re: Misleading Message/Bug
It's been rumoured that W. Scott Wilburn said: I am using gnucash-1.3.7 When I specify a file on the command line with a non-existent path, I get the "...appears to be in use by another user ... remove .LCK file..." message box instead of the "...could not be found" message box that appears if the path is valid, but the file doesn't exist. strange, I just fixed this bug a few weeks ago ... wonder what broke ... --linas
Re: on-line banking qif import
It's been rumoured that Bill Gribble said: Linas Vepstas [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sooo (sound of lightbulb turning on) isn't the right way to import QIF files is to run them through a reconcile-like dialogue? However, as you point out, downloading short snippets of QIF from the bank is a pretty common operation, and for this case we need a way of comparing the transactions that are being imported with already-existing transactions so as to match up QIF imported ones with ones you entered from your checkbook. Its not just 'matching them up', its also marking them as 'tentatively cleared' in the reconcile dialog. Basically, since the qif is 'just like' a paper statement one got from the bank, it should be treated the same way (but automated). New transactions should be 'tentatively added' and old transactions 'tentatively cleared', until the user can review the contents of the 'reconcile' window, and make the changes permanent. --- More generically, I was looking at the reconcile window as 'a place to review changes before they are made permanent', which one might even be interested in having when doing mass-imports of raw data. --linas
Re: How to get German mutual font quotes with gnc-prices ?
On Thu, 04 May 2000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: G'day everyone, On Wed, May 03, 2000 at 02:20:03PM -0700, Dave Peticolas wrote: [assorted snippage throughout] Unfortunately the funds from Union Investment www.union-investment.de are there also not available. try this site (sory it is in German): http://bbbank.teledata.de:9056/bbbank/Uebersicht.htm gnc-prices doesn't actually fetch the data directly, that is done by a perl module Quote.pm. This module has recently been broken out into a separate project, located at http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=4232 Finance::Quote supports a variety of sources, the most useful being yahoo and yahoo_europe. While these provide access to a number of funds and mutual stocks, there are still a great deal that cannot be fetched through Yahoo!. There are plans to do a bit of a rewrite to Finance::Quote to allow more 'pluggable modules' types of methods. This hasn't started properly in earnest, but there has been some discussion. If you're interested in helping by writing a module, or want to supply a 'wish-list' to the developers, you're welcome to join the finance-quote-devel mailing list: http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/finance-quote-devel The page which Dave mentioned (http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=4232) also provides access to downloads, status reports, CVS access, and other useful facilities. Please feel free to make use of it. This also reminds me that I should consider rolling the 0.18 release of Finance::Quote back into GnuCash. Paul, thanks for these informations. I will have a look at your code, maybe I am able to add something. Reinhold
Re: cvs 2000-05-08
I've been lurking here all of three days :-))) ... but have attempted to install gnuCASH twice in the last six months. Robert Graham Merkel wrote: Dave Peticolas writes: CVS has been updated. New Stuff: + Applied Rob Browning's patch to break out g-wrap. NOTE 1: Before you update, remove src/guile/gnucash.h You can also delete lib/g-wrap, lib/g-wrap-install, and lib/g-wrap.configure. NOTE 2: You will need to install the g-wrap module, available at: ftp://ftp.gnucash.org/pub/g-wrap/g-wrap-0.9.1.tar.gz You only need g-wrap if you are compling from source. I'm building a g-wrap .deb, an experimental one should be available RSN. Robert Merkel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: cvs 2000-05-08
I've been lurking here all of three days :-))) ... but have attempted to install gnuCASH twice in the last six months. It seems my libeguile doesn't get recognized. At Saturday's InstallFest here in Anchorage, there were three networking gurus trying to help me get an install (both rpm and compile). One suggested that my Gnome was incomplete, that maybe a SuSE 6.4 reinstall might be worth more than the upgrade I did last week. Is there a SuSE person here who would contact me off-list so I don't plug up things here? Stanley Long Anchorage, Alaska Robert Graham Merkel wrote: Dave Peticolas writes: CVS has been updated. New Stuff: + Applied Rob Browning's patch to break out g-wrap. NOTE 1: Before you update, remove src/guile/gnucash.h You can also delete lib/g-wrap, lib/g-wrap-install, and lib/g-wrap.configure. NOTE 2: You will need to install the g-wrap module, available at: ftp://ftp.gnucash.org/pub/g-wrap/g-wrap-0.9.1.tar.gz You only need g-wrap if you are compling from source. I'm building a g-wrap .deb, an experimental one should be available RSN. Robert Merkel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Getting people to read the docs
On Tue, May 09, 2000 at 12:09:23PM -0400, Jesse D. Sightler wrote: That is not likely to work. :-) Help should be context sensitive, and you should offer a "Wizard" like process for setting up accounts if you are afraid that people are getting them wrong. I think it's important to remember that many people do not like to study software manuals or accounting books, and a program which continuously reminds people to do so may be abandonded by these people. Assistants (wizards is a silly name :) are useable, I think. I'm not sure how much context-sensitive help is actually read. :( The Microsoft task-oriented help, in my experience, is sometimes useful, but is probablematic when the exact task one is looking for is not listed. ...perhaps some sort of automatically generated web FAQ? -- Randolph Fritz Eugene, Oregon, USA
Re: on-line banking qif import
On Tue, May 09, 2000 at 12:50:09AM -0500, Linas Vepstas wrote: I was talking to someone about on-line banking gnucash. I hadn't thought about ti much, but a large part of on-line banking is reconciling statements against what the bank has. Now, many 'online banks' use QIF export as a way of sending statements to users. Sooo (sound of lightbulb turning on) isn't the right way to import QIF files is to run them through a reconcile-like dialogue? Anyone out there using gnucash and also looking at thier bank-staements on-line? What do y'all think? That's exactly what I am currently doing manually, once a week. My Credit Union can provide transaction records in QIF format, but there doesn't seem to be a good way to use them with GnuCash. One of the things I like about this combination of services is the amount of work it saves; errors are caught early, and there is no need to laboriously drag through a month or more of transactions to unsnarl mistakes. -- Randolph Fritz Eugene, Oregon, USA
email difficulties
hello, i keep getting fatal errors (no mailbox by that name) when i try to mail "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" is it just me, or are there problems? thanks, paul
Re: cvs 2000-05-08
Stanley Long wrote: I've been lurking here all of three days :-))) ... but have attempted to install gnuCASH twice in the last six months. It seems my libeguile doesn't get recognized. AFAIK the rpm is build against guile-1.3 and SuSE comes with guile-1.3.4. Try --nodeps when installing the rpm. At Saturday's InstallFest here in Anchorage, there were three networking gurus trying to help me get an install (both rpm and compile). One suggested that my Gnome was incomplete, that maybe a SuSE 6.4 reinstall might be worth more than the upgrade I did last week. What are your exact problems when compiling? Is there a SuSE person here who would contact me off-list so I don't plug up things here? I haven't installed SuSE 6.4 yet, but I will try to help you. Herbert. -- Herbert Thoma FhG-IIS A, Studio Department Am Weichselgarten3, 91058 Erlangen, Germany Phone: +49-9131-776-323 Fax: +49-9131-776-399 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www: http://www.iis.fhg.de/
Re: Combining Files
Is there a way to combine two .xac files? The accounts in each file are different, so there is no need to combine accounts. No, there is no automated way to do that. dave
cvs 2000-05-09
CVS has been updated. New Stuff: + Herbert Thoma's updated SuSE-6.3.txt + GnuCash accepts a --nofile argument which will prevent autoloading the last opened file (or anyfile for that matter). dave
Re: Getting people to read the docs
Randolph Fritz writes: I think it's important to remember that many people do not like to study software manuals or accounting books, and a program which continuously reminds people to do so may be abandonded by these people. No one I know likes to study software manuals or accounting books, but perhaps it might be better to encourage those who refuse to do so to hire someone to do their accounting for them. -- John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hasler) Dancing Horse Hill Elmwood, WI
Re: Open icon
Dave Peticolas wrote: On Mon, May 08, 2000 at 07:25:00PM -0700, Dave Peticolas wrote: On Mon, 08 May 2000, Ben Stanley wrote: I vote that the open icon stays gone. I found it potentially confusing, and I never used the open file button. I agree. Well, that's three people against, one for, so looks like it will stay out for now. Terry, would adding your database to the argument used to launch gnucash help you out here? Similarly, would it be possible for gnucash to save in its options file the last database it opened/created (or the database that was open when gnucash w last closed) and open that database by default when no database is passed to it? Most financial apps I've used do this (Quicken, Money, Moneydance), so it's not an uncommon feature. Sure, that would be no problem. dave Win some, lose some ;-) Automagically opening the last DB used would be a big help
Re: Getting people to read the docs
On Tue, May 09, 2000 at 06:14:27PM -0500, John Hasler wrote: Randolph Fritz writes: I think it's important to remember that many people do not like to study software manuals or accounting books, and a program which continuously reminds people to do so may be abandonded by these people. No one I know likes to study software manuals or accounting books, but perhaps it might be better to encourage those who refuse to do so to hire someone to do their accounting for them. Well, now you know someone, or at least 1/2 of someone; I like studying new software, if it's interesting and the manuals are reasonably accessible. :) I'll go along with encouragement, however I believe the typical Quicken user is just someone keeping their home accounts, and I doubt they will study accounting to use gnucash; I will not. That said, I will admit that I do not know the intended user group, or how they will respond. For best acceptance, I think some simple user testing is in order. Also, most people prefer to learn a tool by working with it, and if those people are to feel supported, the basic household functions of the tool had probably best be usable without study. This doesn't apply to business users, I would think. -- Randolph Fritz Eugene, Oregon, USA
question: Account codes are not providing order
I am running gnucash 1.37 with redhat 6.1 rpm. When I first add a asset account with the account code 100. Next I add a liability account with the account code 200. The liability account is above the asset account. The sort order that the account codes should do is not working. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks Andy Catero
Re: Register change in 1.3.7
On the other hand, if I could get a "sort order" option on the reconcile window so that I could make it match the ordering on my bank statements, I would be just overjoyed...:) Let me ask how you see this working. So you want to reorder them by hand, right? Would you need to see the order again later, or just while you were reconciling? No, I don't want to reorder them by hand. A simple "sort order" menu like the register window has would suffice. Both my wife and I write checks on the account, using two different checkbooks. As a result, if you sort the checks by date (as does the reconcile window), they will be out of order numerically. To reconcile things against what the bank thinks, I have to pass through the list three or four times. If, instead, things were listed in item number order (with unnumbered items at one end or the other) like "that other program" did, reconciliation would be quite a bit quicker. Ohhh, I understand now. I don't write many checks, and my bank orders ATM and debit card transactions (the bulk of my statement) by date. Well, this makes things much simpler. I'll just add a menu like we have in the register. My initial impression is to have separate orders for debits and credits. thanks, dave
