Christopher, I understand your frustration at trying to help and getting a negative response. In trying to fix one problem, you have unwittingly waded into a bigger one.
Your message raises a couple of points. First, this rollback need not be forever. It could wait until such time as the reconcile date issues can be more effectively addressed-- for example, by creating an interface to allow users to view or correct them. Your own advice to use the reconciliation report to track down the errors might point a way toward such a solution. Second, your changes have made a set of books that were completely functional in earlier versions no longer functional-- all without any changes to the underlying data. I have significant problems with that, and I can't believe that you would even suggest arbitrarily changing data in a user's books without considering ways to allow the user to make those fixes consciously, themselves. I've mentioned that you've done this before with the reports; I suggest you reconsider your approach to development of Gnucash tools. Screwing up reconciliation and then looking for a slap dash post hoc fix is not the way to win over users. David T. -------- Original Message -------- From: Christopher Lam <christopher....@gmail.com> Sent: Thu Apr 09 12:55:18 GMT+05:30 2020 Cc: gnucash-devel <gnucash-devel@gnucash.org> Subject: Re: [GNC-dev] About 3.9 and reconciliation balances Regarding reverting: It is too difficult to create a UI to modify reconciled dates. Options to fix this are: 1. roll back this change and tolerate the invalid data. This means any progress on that matter is hindered forever. 2. allow this change depending on a user-selectable book property "Use strict reconcile date balances". Pros: This means the book can be read/written by any recent version. See "Use split action for num" as a similar example. Cons: The toggled property can be a confusing option for new users. 3. allow this change depending on a non-user-selectable book feature "Use strict reconcile date balances". Pros: This feature can be set by a menu item. It triggers one-time verification of all reconciled dates, instructing users to correct/re-reconcile previous reconciled-dates, and sets the book feature if all dates seem correct. Cons: This means the book can only be read by 3.10 onwards. On Thu, 9 Apr 2020, 11:29 am Christopher Lam, <christopher....@gmail.com> wrote: > Thank you David. > > Further work for tighter safeguards is planned in > https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/685 -- no scrubbing is currently > on the table but a warning during reconciliation if future splits are > detected. > > On Thu, 9 Apr 2020, 9:59 am David Cousens, <davidcous...@bigpond.com> > wrote: > >> I am now happy that there is no problem with the starting balance >> calculation >> in 3.9 and the problem was caused by a previously undetected finger >> problem >> on my part and withdraw my previous qualms about retaining it for the >> future. >> >> I still think it is excessive to restrict the reconciliation date entry in >> any way but agree that a warning should be displayed if either a statment >> date in advance of "today" is entered, perhaps with the option for the >> user >> to confirm that they either want to retain the advance date or reenter it >> in >> a popup dialog. >> >> Also agree with a warning if any reconciled transactions with reconcile >> dates in advance of today are detected in the file. I am less sure about >> assigning them to an arbitrary past date however. >> >> If a procedure for correcting them is developed it might be helpful if it >> could display data for transactiions with reconciled splits which have the >> advance date. The information that I found most useful to determine when I >> made the error were the transaction date posted and the transaction date >> entered into GnuCash and the reconciliation date and the account name or >> at >> least the account guid to confirm that all the affected splits are to a >> single account. This was particularlyuseful to me because i append an "_R" >> to statement pdf files I have reconciled and the file modified time allows >> me to determine the date I did a recociliation. In future I will append >> "_Ryyyymmdd" so i don't have to look up the modified times for the files >> as >> well. >> >> Bug797668 is now marked as resolved >> >> >> >> ----- >> David Cousens >> -- >> Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-Dev-f1435356.html >> _______________________________________________ >> gnucash-devel mailing list >> gnucash-devel@gnucash.org >> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel >> > _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
