[GNC] Thoughts on Online Quotes documentation

[Jim DeLaHunt]

I recently had a problem[1] with getting online quotes from GnuCash 5.5 
on macOS. It caused me to reflect on some shortcomings[2] of the GnuCash 
wiki page on Online Quotes[3]. This message is an attempt to capture 
some thoughts on how that the Online Quotes documentation might be 
improved. Actually doing the improvement is a big job. I don't promise 
to do it myself right now.


A general observation: the top of Online Quotes is big and sprawling, 
with many facets:


1. The task: how to install, how to update, how to configure stock
   entries, how to get quotes, how to get historical prices
2. The components of the online quotes machinery:
1. the Perl interpreter
2. Finance::Quote and the Perl modules on which it depends
3. GnuCash's tools for installing Finance::Quote
4. System installs vs package manager installs of Perl & modules
   (I'm looking at you, Homebrew and MacPorts)
3. The different platforms — Unix, macOS, Apple Silicon vs x86_64 on
   macOS, Windows, different versions of Windows. There are variants of
   many of the sections for the various platforms.
4. The different data sources and symbols quirks for each
5. Troubleshooting
6. Versions of GnuCash: the facilities for online quotes have changed
   from major version to major version of GnuCash, and that content is
   folded together into one wiki page.
7. The documentation locations: the Online Quotes wiki page[3], and two
   places in the GnuCash manual[4][5], aspire to be well coordinated
   but have evolved away from that.

The current Online Quotes wiki page is 108,503 bytes mixing together 
#1-#6 above. That is so big and confusing to be hard to navigate.


One short term action could be to agree how to refactor. Then various 
people can take incremental refactoring steps.


In particular, I suggest we consider splitting Online Quotes by GnuCash 
version groups, then by platform. Version groups are ranges of GnuCash 
versions, and change where the Online Quotes behaviour in GnuCash 
changed: current is GnuCash 5.x, previous is 4.x, before that is 3.11 
and earlier. Platform is probably: macOS (inc Homebrew, Gnucash), 
Windows, Unix, cross-platform.


Imagine the article  refers to 
sub-articles like 
, 
, 
. (Those 
names are for illustration only. Getting good names will probably take 
some work.)


Another short-term action is to move content out of the wiki article and 
into the GnuCash Manual, especially for Installation. The article says, 
"Before you continue read the Official Documentation... We try to reduce 
redundancy." Let's take that seriously.


Hopefully these notes contribute to whatever improvement project gets done.
Best regards,
   —Jim DeLaHunt

[1] [GNC] GnuCash 5.5 (macOS) can't get quotes, because it doesn't see 
JSON::Parse,  Sat, 23 Dec 2023 12:30:43 -0800 



[2] ibid thread,  Sun, 24 Dec 2023 11:31:44 -0800 



[3] 

[4] GnuCash Manual, 5.4.2. "Steps to enable Online Quotes updating" 



[5] GnuCash Manual, Chapter 11. "Setting Up the Quote Retrieval" 


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Re: [GNC] Thoughts on Online Quotes documentation

[orange]

   I built GNUcash a couple of years back on a Raspberry pi, got the
   quotes working IIRC (I had definitely installed Finance::Quote and even
   applied an update to a new version), started trying to learn how to use
   it but ended up not doing anything much with it all for various time
   related reasons.

   I've recently built the 5.4 version to have another try at adopting
   this but the quotes gives me an error.  From what I can gather, things
   have moved on since my last attempt and quotes via Yahoo are no longer
   available.  So, I'm looking for what I need to do to get this all
   working (primarily with UK listed stocks).

   I haven't found a simple guide to follow and, as per Jim's
   observations, the wiki just doesn't seem to cover the required
   information and still talks about Yahoo.  It isn't helping at all with
   my level of confusion!

   A revamp of the documentation in this area, with a simple guide to the
   current situation and what is required, would be greatly appreciated
   and would be a great help to adoption by newbies like myself.

   I would like to thank Jim for the suggestions and all those involved in
   making GNUcash available.

   All the best
   Simon
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Re: [GNC] Thoughts on Online Quotes documentation

[Frank H. Ellenberger]

Hi Jim,

I am sorry for the delay. I inserted my view inline.

Am 25.12.23 um 01:14 schrieb Jim DeLaHunt:
I recently had a problem[1] with getting online quotes from GnuCash 5.5 
on macOS. It caused me to reflect on some shortcomings[2] of the GnuCash 
wiki page on Online Quotes[3]. This message is an attempt to capture 
some thoughts on how that the Online Quotes documentation might be 
improved. Actually doing the improvement is a big job. I don't promise 
to do it myself right now.


A general observation: the top of Online Quotes is big and sprawling, 
with many facets:


1. The task: how to install, how to update, how to configure stock
    entries, how to get quotes, how to get historical prices
2. The components of the online quotes machinery:
     1. the Perl interpreter
     2. Finance::Quote and the Perl modules on which it depends
     3. GnuCash's tools for installing Finance::Quote
     4. System installs vs package manager installs of Perl & modules
    (I'm looking at you, Homebrew and MacPorts)
3. The different platforms — Unix, macOS, Apple Silicon vs x86_64 on
    macOS, Windows, different versions of Windows. There are variants of
    many of the sections for the various platforms.
4. The different data sources and symbols quirks for each
5. Troubleshooting
6. Versions of GnuCash: the facilities for online quotes have changed
    from major version to major version of GnuCash, and that content is
    folded together into one wiki page.
7. The documentation locations: the Online Quotes wiki page[3], and two
    places in the GnuCash manual[4][5], aspire to be well coordinated
    but have evolved away from that.

The current Online Quotes wiki page is 108,503 bytes mixing together 
#1-#6 above. That is so big and confusing to be hard to navigate.


One short term action could be to agree how to refactor. Then various 
people can take incremental refactoring steps.


In particular, I suggest we consider splitting Online Quotes by GnuCash 
version groups, then by platform. Version groups are ranges of GnuCash 
versions, and change where the Online Quotes behaviour in GnuCash 
changed: current is GnuCash 5.x, previous is 4.x, before that is 3.11 
and earlier. Platform is probably: macOS (inc Homebrew, Gnucash), 
Windows, Unix, cross-platform.


While at the beginning of a change most users still have the older 
version. So both versions are on the same level of the Wiki. In the 
manual older versions should only survive in a footnote to inform an 
updating user about the change and have still the infos for users who 
can or want not update the program.


Imagine the article  refers to 
sub-articles like 
, 
, 
. (Those 
names are for illustration only. Getting good names will probably take 
some work.)


ISTR that wikipedia discourages the use of subpages.

Another short-term action is to move content out of the wiki article and 
into the GnuCash Manual, especially for Installation. The article says, 
"Before you continue read the Official Documentation... We try to reduce 
redundancy." Let's take that seriously.


This is the important part. So feel free to remove or replace parts 
covered by the manual with links to the respective section.
That is often forgotten because there are up to 3 month between the 
change in the docs visible as

https://code.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-manual/index.html
and their release published as
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v5/C/gnucash-manual/index.html.

There is only one small issue: wikimedia's syntax-highlight covers more 
languages than docbook's. So some examples look nicer in the wiki than 
in docbook.



Hopefully these notes contribute to whatever improvement project gets done.
Best regards,
    —Jim DeLaHunt

[1] [GNC] GnuCash 5.5 (macOS) can't get quotes, because it doesn't see 
JSON::Parse,  Sat, 23 Dec 2023 12:30:43 -0800 



[2] ibid thread,  Sun, 24 Dec 2023 11:31:44 -0800 



[3] 

[4] GnuCash Manual, 5.4.2. "Steps to enable Online Quotes updating" 



[5] GnuCash Manual, Chapter 11. "Setting Up the Quote Retrieval" 



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Re: [GNC] Thoughts on Online Quotes documentation

[Frank H. Ellenberger]

Hello Simon,

Am 30.12.23 um 19:31 schrieb ora...@sbutler.co.uk:

I built GNUcash a couple of years back on a Raspberry pi, got the
quotes working IIRC (I had definitely installed Finance::Quote and even
applied an update to a new version), started trying to learn how to use
it but ended up not doing anything much with it all for various time
related reasons.

I've recently built the 5.4 version to have another try at adopting
this but the quotes gives me an error.  From what I can gather, things
have moved on since my last attempt and quotes via Yahoo are no longer
available.  So, I'm looking for what I need to do to get this all
working (primarily with UK listed stocks).

I haven't found a simple guide to follow and, as per Jim's
observations, the wiki just doesn't seem to cover the required
information and still talks about Yahoo.  It isn't helping at all with
my level of confusion!


what is wrong with yahoo_json? It is still part of Finance::Quote 
Version 1.59. Did you mix it with the former yahoo [by CSV] module?



A revamp of the documentation in this area, with a simple guide to the
current situation and what is required, would be greatly appreciated
and would be a great help to adoption by newbies like myself.


Did you read the official doc
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v5/C/gnucash-manual/finance-quote.html
or only the user contributed wiki page?


I would like to thank Jim for the suggestions and all those involved in
making GNUcash available.

All the best
Simon


Regards
Frank
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