14:40:57 <warlord> Hmm, are we going to have a 2.1.6? 16:21:25 <andi5> warlord: wrt 2.1.6, if we plan not to revert the auto-save feature, we might want to have another test version.... iff christian wants to extend / improve it.... if we just change the default to disabled auto-save, then i am fine with no 2.1.6 as well... 16:21:52 <warlord> andi5: ok
I don't want to extend/improve the auto-save feature before 2.2.0 (not enough time available). For that reason I don't think we need another 2.1.6 but should plan for 2.2.0 on the weekend July 15th, http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Release_Schedule It seems to me the "perfect" solution would be to have a separate save-to-checkpoint function as opposed to the save-to-working-file, with extra auto-restore questions at startup, as outlined here by Eric Ladner http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2007-July/020890.html This would require major changes in our saving infrastructure, which I'm not going to do in the upcoming 1-3 months. As an aside, I'd like to point out that the current auto-save behaviour represents exactly how gnucash would behave with a database-backend currently, as explained here correctly http://lists.gnucash.org/logs/2007-07-04.html#T15:30:38 But for 2.2.0 we have the following choices: #1: Auto-save-datafile is enabled by default, just with a different default value (5 minutes? 10 Minutes?), and the explanation dialog box pops up upon the very first auto-save activation. Users would have to into the preferences to disable this feature. #2: Auto-save-datafile will be enabled once, then on the explanation dialog box the user is asked whether she/he wants to have this enabled: "auto-save ... blabla ... Do you want to enable or disable this? [Enable] [Disable]" #3: Auto-save is disabled by default and users have to find out the Option by themselves to enable it. No extra dialog explanation will be shown for this option, neither after startup nor at activation time or whatever. Using this feature is therefore restricted to those users who happen to stumble upon this during browsing through the preferences. The feedback from gnucash-user clearly points toward #3. However, my main intention was to implement a feature that helps "the normal user" to decrease the negative outcome of when an error occurs. This boils down to the question what behaviour "the normal user" actually expects from gnucash. As a programmer I know that my way of understanding gnucash is probably rather different from what "the normal user" does. However, I'm not so sure whether the gnucash-user feedback talks more about "the normal user" expectation than what I would think of, because those subscribers are power-users just as we are. (For example, my wife says the new auto-save behaviour is just fine and understandable, whereas the abovementioned "restore-checkpoint-at-startup" behaviour would be utterly confusing for her - she never really understands what she is supposed to answer when a program asks at startup about "restoring whatever thingy is also there". I'm just saying we developers have to find a decision which doesn't necessarily conform with the majority of feedback on our mailing lists. Neither we ourselves nor even the users of our mailing lists might correspond "the normal user" in a representative way. Decisions, decisions... Following this way of thought I would decide for choice #1, leave as-is for 2.2.0. What do the other developers say? Christian _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
