On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Charles Day <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 3:46 AM, Graham Leggett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Charles Day wrote: >> >> ok, though what happens when the user decides to change the timezone for >>>> account A? (eg. I ask the bank to transfer my account from their Saint >>>> John's branch to their Vancouver branch, 5 timezones apart?) What >>>> happens to >>>> the timestamps and dates displayed then? >>>> >>> >>> The timestamps don't change. Only the value displayed. >>> >> >> This breaks double entry accounting. >> >> If account A and account B had different timezones, it means the balancing >> splits within a transaction can fall on different days. >> > > No, splits don't have posting dates or times. The entire transaction uses a > single timestamp. That's how it works now. Under this proposal, that > timestamp would only be *displayed* differently in different registers, or > not, according to your preference. > (Actually, to be technically correct, each transaction has more than one timestamp, but the others are for purposes other than recording when the transaction was "posted".) > > >> >> If this happened over the start or end of a period of time, your accounts >> would no longer balance - only half the split falls into the period! >> >> In order to be able to trust the data coming out of gnucash, gnucash must >> be completely 100% and absolutely unambiguous about the data. If the user >> specified a day, a month and a year, there must be absolutely no way >> possible at all that circumstances can conspire to have that day month and >> year changed to a different day month and year without the user's knowledge. >> The single and only way a date should change is if the user explicitly went >> in and changed that date, and at no other time. >> > > I agree. What you experienced when you switched to the UK time zone is > unacceptable. > > >> The only safe way to do this is to store a date as a date, and not a >> timestamp. >> > > I disagree. If GnuCash uses timestamps, but a particular user such as > yourself wants to disable the effects of time of day and time zone > differences, then GnuCash could be set to use a single time zone for all > accounts. I imagine there being a global preference called something like "I > want to enter transaction times", which would be off by default, causing > GnuCash to completely ignore the time zone of your computer, So when you > moved your computer between time zones, it wouldn't affect your accounting. > > >> Regards, >> Graham >> -- >> > > -Charles > _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
