[post-1.6] i18n ambiguities
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- There are a number of i18n issues that I think have to be resolved in the long term. Namely, some words in english means a bunch of different things while spelt the same. Example: the string "Transfer" could either be a verb (to transfer money, used as toolbar label) or a noun (a transfer of money has happened, used in the 'action'-field of a transaction). As you might guess, different meanings tend to need different translations, depending on the target language. In the "Transfer" example, it is easy to understand that other languages have a distinction between the verb form and the noun form. There are more ambiguous words. Just have a look at the glossary in po/gnc-glossary.txt -- every word that has a explanation with a 1.,2.,3. or a (a), (b), (c) will very likely need different translations for each meaning. (Fortunately most of the times this is not the case for German, but it will very likely be in some given language.) The ambiguities usually are not a problem if the words are used in a phrase. But for the messages with single words we need to come up with a distinction between different meanings. E.g. instead of the string "Transfer" we would need to use the string "verb:transfer" and "action:transfer". (Actually we would need a third string, like "creditTransfer:transfer" because of an additional meaning of the noun "transfer" -- see the glossary.) Is it possible to switch to extended strings like this? AFAIK the affected words are: credit debit description equity payment transfer Christian -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) iQCVAwUBOxqbtWXAi+BfhivFAQFhaAQAshVGItPYXJzU4tZjNK3ZJGR/FjTnHcsD CIDPRfxPAyISYQp5wdBwozqwHwxgVZoxJqxonT6GOLDglSCRo1ix6zUEaPcR55H4 OACMP9yKgDrqUWUUJsMTVKnnzPjpkT+7TN74QIdMVEtovasnFfjBLw4hG8gqlRfN qSQIzMheJv4= =pSrc -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Q: How to record a grant
Here's a silly accounting question: I'm the treasurer for a church... Let's say I get a grant for $500.00 for a specific purpose The money is deposited into the church bank account It is spent in smaller transactions over the course of the following year or so How do I keep track of it? 1) open a new sub-account of the bank account? (makes it difficult to reconcile the bank account) 2) create a new liability, started off by an amount equal to the grant. Deposit the grant money into the bank account. Spending the grant money reduces the liability. I'm doing 2), but it means I have to check the balance of the bank account against my liabilities every time I write a cheque... But it does make it easy to reconcile the bank statements. :-) If there is a better way of doing it, I'd like to hear it. I'd be interested in any way of automatically showing assets - liabilities so that I can see at a glance how much money I really have in the bank... At the moment, I have to remember to check on the liabilities accounts before I write any cheques. Note that I have 2 different bank accounts, and a liability tree for each one. When I say assets - liabilities, I mean that I must be able to select the liabilites to offset against a particular bank account. Ben. ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: Q: How to record a grant
On 04 Jun 2001 09:39:10 +1000, Ben Stanley wrote: > Here's a silly accounting question: > I'm the treasurer for a church... > Let's say I get a grant for $500.00 for a specific purpose > The money is deposited into the church bank account > It is spent in smaller transactions over the course of the > following year or so > How do I keep track of it? > 1) open a new sub-account of the bank account? (makes it > difficult to reconcile the bank account) > 2) create a new liability, started off by an amount equal to > the grant. Deposit the grant money into the bank account. Spending the > grant money reduces the liability. > I'm doing 2), but it means I have to check the balance of the > > bank account against my liabilities every time I write a cheque... > But it does make it easy to reconcile the bank statements. > :-) > > If there is a better way of doing it, I'd like to hear it. > > I'd be interested in any way of automatically showing > assets - liabilities > so that I can see at a glance how much money I really have in the > bank... At the moment, I have to remember to check on the liabilities > accounts before I write any cheques. > > Note that I have 2 different bank accounts, and a liability tree for > each one. When I say assets - liabilities, I mean that I must be able to > > select the liabilites to offset against a particular bank account. > > Ben. I didn't see the original question, but... I would say that option 2) is the right way to go. You have to go through the checkbook anyway working out what each check is for. So as you say everytime you write a check that is being paid for by the fund you reduce the liability of the grant. Of course if you track suppliers (i.e. you pay on invoice), then each time an invoice comes in, you work out how much of that invoice is against the grant and split the invoice between the general expenses (non grant) and the grant and journal accordingly. Then when you pay the invoice it just journals between the bank and the supplier. If you want me to explain that better, let me know. Damian -- Damian Ivereigh CEPS Team Lead http://wwwin-print.cisco.com Desk: +61 2 8446 6344 Mob: +61 418 217 582 ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
RE: Q: How to record a grant
> ... but it means I have to check the balance of the > bank account against my liabilities every time I write a cheque... > But it does make it easy to reconcile the bank statements. > :-) > If there is a better way of doing it, I'd like to hear it. The "solution" for knowing the amount left in the bank account after liabilities are accounted for would be another report. Is there a report that will let us use different accounts as affecting each other? ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: Q: How to record a grant
Ben Stanley wrote: > Here's a silly accounting question: > I'm the treasurer for a church... > Let's say I get a grant for $500.00 for a specific purpose > The money is deposited into the church bank account > It is spent in smaller transactions over the course of the > following year or so > How do I keep track of it? > 1) open a new sub-account of the bank account? (makes it > difficult to reconcile the bank account) > 2) create a new liability, started off by an amount equal to > the grant. Deposit the grant money into the bank account. Spending the > grant money reduces the liability. > I'm doing 2), but it means I have to check the balance of the > bank account against my liabilities every time I write a cheque... > But it does make it easy to reconcile the bank statements. > :-) > > If there is a better way of doing it, I'd like to hear it. Have you considered making the grant an "equity" account rather than a liability? Transfer money from the equity account to the bank account when you receive the grant. I haven't thought through the wider implications of this, but its the first thing that came to my mind and is the solution I would have thought logical. I can discuss this more with you on IRC if you wish. Conrad. -- Conrad Canterford ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Water Sprite Pty Ltd | Watersprite Pty Ltd: GPO Box 355, | - Australian Tour and Event Management (ATEM) Canberra, ACT 2601 | - Ticketing Division. Mobile: +61 419 122553 | - Catering Services Division. ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
RE: Q: How to record a grant
But then how do you keep a track of the fact that that money is to only be used on one project and when the money from the grant has run out the project has to stop or find some new funding. > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Conrad > Canterford > Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 10:55 AM > To: Ben Stanley > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Q: How to record a grant > > > Ben Stanley wrote: > > Here's a silly accounting question: > > I'm the treasurer for a church... > > Let's say I get a grant for $500.00 for a > specific purpose > > The money is deposited into the church bank account > > It is spent in smaller transactions over the > course of the > > following year or so > > How do I keep track of it? > > 1) open a new sub-account of the bank account? (makes it > > difficult to reconcile the bank account) > > 2) create a new liability, started off by an > amount equal to > > the grant. Deposit the grant money into the bank account. > Spending the > > grant money reduces the liability. > > I'm doing 2), but it means I have to check the > balance of the > > bank account against my liabilities every time I write a cheque... > > But it does make it easy to reconcile the bank > statements. > > :-) > > > > If there is a better way of doing it, I'd like to hear it. > > Have you considered making the grant an "equity" account rather than a > liability? Transfer money from the equity account to the bank account > when you receive the grant. I haven't thought through the wider > implications of this, but its the first thing that came to my mind and > is the solution I would have thought logical. > I can discuss this more with you on IRC if you wish. > > Conrad. > -- > Conrad Canterford ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > Water Sprite Pty Ltd | Watersprite Pty Ltd: > GPO Box 355, | - Australian Tour and Event > Management (ATEM) > Canberra, ACT 2601 | - Ticketing Division. > Mobile: +61 419 122553 | - Catering Services Division. > ___ > gnucash-devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel > ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: [post-1.6] i18n ambiguities
On Sun, Jun 03, 2001 at 10:18:59PM +0200, Christian Stimming wrote: > There are a number of i18n issues that I think have to be resolved in the > long term. Namely, some words in english means a bunch of different things > while spelt the same. Example: the string "Transfer" could either be a > verb (to transfer money, used as toolbar label) or a noun (a transfer of > money has happened, used in the 'action'-field of a transaction). This might be a good time to mention that I started on a dutch translation :) At what point would it be useful for me to send it in? Currently I have about 10% of the entries translated. I've run into the same problem. For example, "amount" should be translated to "bedrag" when it's an amount of money, and "hoeveelheid" otherwise. "add" is "optellen" when doing sums, and "toevoegen" when adding items to a list. It's also difficult to tell from the source code how a word will be used -- often it's part of a list of strings, far away from the code that will use it. By the way, what should I do with entries like "label773"? Richard Braakman ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Average Balance report borken WRT stocks/mutual funds
It appears that the average-balance report is fundamentally wrong-headed about balance displays for stock and mutual fund accounts. Basically, when the average-balance report converts to the report currency, a fixed price is calculated which is used for all intervals in the report. This is OK for a foreign currency, but for shares is almost certainly not what you want - you want to look up new prices each time you deal with a new transaction to show how the total value of your stock changes over time. We can probably get this fixed in time for the scheduled release of 1.6, but we won't have time to test it much. However, if the problems with gtkhtml and guppi printing don't get sorted out perhaps holding off is going to be desirable after all. -- Robert Merkel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Go You Big Red Fire Engine -- Unknown Audience Member at Adam Hills standup gig ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: [post-1.6] i18n ambiguities
On 03 Jun 2001 22:18:59 +0200, Christian Stimming wrote: > The ambiguities usually are not a problem if the words are used in a > phrase. But for the messages with single words we need to come up with a > distinction between different meanings. E.g. instead of the string > "Transfer" we would need to use the string "verb:transfer" and > "action:transfer". (Actually we would need a third string, like > "creditTransfer:transfer" because of an additional meaning of the noun > "transfer" -- see the glossary.) > > Is it possible to switch to extended strings like this? AFAIK the affected > words are: It is, but we should add some infrastructure for doing this. Right now, the C code just uses a constant offset to 'leap over' the prefix. dave ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: 1.5.97 first impression
On Mon, 04 Jun 2001 15:41:37 Jeffrey W. Baker wrote: > Hi, > > I've been trying to install GnuCash off and on for at least two years. > 1.5.97 is the first version that I have successfully installed. > Congratulations are in order, I think. Here is a rundown of my > impressions: > > Installation is much more of a pain in the ass than any other program I > have ever installed. SLIB is definitely the weak link: installing it > from > source is a completely undocumented headache. Anyway I finally got it > installed when I found mention of GUILE_LOAD_PATH on some mailing list > somewhere. GnuCash also has more obscure dependencies than any other > application on my system. Installing all of them is a chore, even for a > user who has been developing software on Unix for decades. That said, > I'm > sure most people install GnuCash from packages. It's the package > maintainers that we'll have to put on the suicide watch. > I agree that there are a lot of dependancies. However, if the distributors do their jobs right, once the new GnuCash becomes part of the distros the problem largely goes away. I also expect that Ximian will add it to their GNOME distribution once the release is stable and they get around to it, making the installation trivial. WRT to the specific issue with slib, there are moves, I believe to get it into the main guile distribution, so one dependancy will go away :) > Anyway, Once the beast is up and running it works acceptably. I did > notice that the initial new file wizard doesn't display any account types > in its list, so I couldn't use it jumpstart my accounts tree. Is it > supposed to work in this verion? > Could you please explain in more detail what you mean? It works for us here. > Another major flaw was that I carefully configured my expenses pie chart, > but after I closed its notebook tab, all my settings went away. I chose > Reports->Income & Expense->Expense Pie Chart, and it had the default > settings again. How do I save my custom reports? (Also it looks like > you > have to be a Ph.D CompSci to create new reports. Some people can make > macros with *Basic but try teaching my wife about functional > programming!) > You can just leave them open and keep the tabs there - they are persistent across sessions. We should, however, be able to save named reports explicitly, and GnuCash doesn't do that yet. With respect to the perceived difficulty of writing custom reports, well, all I can say is that I, and my fellow developere, like working with scheme, and intend to keep doing so. That said, if somebody were to contribute and maintain another language binding, that would be all well and good, but I personally don't feel any need at this point. > The help browser left navigation doesn't stay in sync with the display on > the right. Also selecting something on the left navigates to something > else entirely on the right. > Yes, the help-topics stuff is slightly broken at the moment, I believe. > If GConf is unavailable (because oafd has gone out to pasture), GnuCash > will crash when trying to create reports. > This sounds like a bug in gtkhtml, which is used to display reports. I'll take a look. > Speaking of reports, generating even the simplest reports takes forever. > On my 1.2 GHz Athlon with 512M of memory, generating the pie chart of > exactly one expense takes over 30 seconds. Is there some way I can fix > that? > Reports can be slow, but aren't usually *that* slow. What version of guile are you using? > Memory usage is completely out of proportion. With a few ledger entries > and one report, the RSS is 21M, almost as much as Mozilla. Restarting > doesn't help. > I can't really comment here because I don't know enough about the issues, but fair amounts of that are probably various bitmaps , guile stack (which can be reduced if it turns out to be a problem), and about 10 megabytes of shared libraries (of which only one copy gets loaded for all the processes, I think). > Starting GnuCash also takes forever. I noticed with strace that a whole > lot of Scheme hoo-haw happens at startup time, then the display blocks > for 30 seconds generating my report. > Like I said, it can be slow, but not that slow. I have a P3-733 and my startup is much, much faster than that. I should also add that several of the GnuCash developers are working on speedups and performance analysis tools for guile. > The splash screen is usually obscured at startup by the main window, and > it also has a frame which usually splash screens do not. This is partly a window manager issue. I know that at some stages the splash screen was frameless, but Dave Peticolas (the lead programmer) changed it back because, I believe, it worked better with some window managers that way. Perhaps he will comment further . . . > I noticed that the account tree is collapsed when I restart. I would > rather save the previous expanded/collapsed state. Is there a
Re: Average Balance report borken WRT stocks/mutual funds
On 04 Jun 2001 15:47:18 +1000, Robert Graham Merkel wrote: > It appears that the average-balance report is fundamentally wrong-headed > about balance displays for stock and mutual fund accounts. > > Basically, when the average-balance report converts to the report currency, > a fixed price is calculated which is used for all intervals in the report. > This is OK for a foreign currency, but for shares is almost certainly > not what you want - you want to look up new prices each time you deal > with a new transaction to show how the total value of your stock changes > over time. > > We can probably get this fixed in time for the scheduled release of 1.6, > but we won't have time to test it much. However, if the problems with > gtkhtml and guppi printing don't get sorted out perhaps holding off is > going to be desirable after all. I don't think that printing problems are serious enough to delay release, especially since it may be out of our control. dave ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: [post-1.6] i18n ambiguities
On 03 Jun 2001 23:28:19 -0700, Dave Peticolas wrote: > On 03 Jun 2001 22:18:59 +0200, Christian Stimming wrote: > > The ambiguities usually are not a problem if the words are used in a > > phrase. But for the messages with single words we need to come up with a > > distinction between different meanings. E.g. instead of the string > > "Transfer" we would need to use the string "verb:transfer" and > > "action:transfer". (Actually we would need a third string, like > > "creditTransfer:transfer" because of an additional meaning of the noun > > "transfer" -- see the glossary.) > > > > Is it possible to switch to extended strings like this? AFAIK the affected > > words are: > > It is, but we should add some infrastructure for doing > this. Right now, the C code just uses a constant offset > to 'leap over' the prefix. > > dave Is English not an appropriate localization? What I mean is can't English just be another langauge in which the translations are:- action:transfer -> transfer creditTransfer:transfer -> transfer I always feel rather embarrassed that everyone has to translate from English and not the other way :-) Damian -- Damian Ivereigh CEPS Team Lead http://wwwin-print.cisco.com Desk: +61 2 8446 6344 Mob: +61 418 217 582 ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: [post-1.6] i18n ambiguities
On 04 Jun 2001 16:38:22 +1000, Damian Ivereigh wrote: > Is English not an appropriate localization? What I mean is can't English > just be another langauge in which the translations are:- > > action:transfer -> transfer > creditTransfer:transfer -> transfer > > I always feel rather embarrassed that everyone has to translate from > English and not the other way :-) English localization is an option, but that means that gettext is now required (which maybe isn't a bad thing). dave ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: 1.5.97 first impression
On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, Robert Graham Merkel wrote: > > Anyway, Once the beast is up and running it works acceptably. I did > > notice that the initial new file wizard doesn't display any account types > > in its list, so I couldn't use it jumpstart my accounts tree. Is it > > supposed to work in this verion? > > > > Could you please explain in more detail what you mean? It works for us > here. For example, I start GnuCash, then I select New File. In the wizard, I select USD as the currency and click next. The next page is entitled "Choose Account Types" and there is a list widget at the top. The list has no entries, only the headers "Account List Type" and "Description". Also it looks as though there should be an icon in the upper right but there is only a white square. > With respect to the perceived difficulty of writing custom reports, > well, all I can say is that I, and my fellow developere, like working > with scheme, and intend to keep doing so. That said, if somebody were > to contribute and maintain another language binding, that would be all > well and good, but I personally don't feel any need at this point. Yeah well I'll push that onto the queue, as it were :) > > Speaking of reports, generating even the simplest reports takes forever. > > On my 1.2 GHz Athlon with 512M of memory, generating the pie chart of > > exactly one expense takes over 30 seconds. Is there some way I can fix > > that? > > > Reports can be slow, but aren't usually *that* slow. What version of guile > are you using? 1.3.4, which came with my distribution. I'm not advised on the life cycle of Guile development. Is it prudent to upgrade? Guppi congratulates me on NOT having an ancient Guile when I run its configure script :) > > Starting GnuCash also takes forever. I noticed with strace that a whole > > lot of Scheme hoo-haw happens at startup time, then the display blocks > > for 30 seconds generating my report. > > > > Like I said, it can be slow, but not that slow. I have a P3-733 and my > startup is much, much faster than that. Okay I'll have a look at it with strace. Maybe it is stalling on something really stupid like name resolution. > I should also add that several of the GnuCash developers are working on > speedups and performance analysis tools for guile. > > > > The splash screen is usually obscured at startup by the main window, and > > it also has a frame which usually splash screens do not. > > This is partly a window manager issue. I know that at some stages the > splash screen was frameless, but Dave Peticolas (the lead programmer) > changed it back because, I believe, it worked better with some window > managers that way. Perhaps he will comment further . . . My usual advice regarding splash screens is to ditch them, but I leave that to your judgement :) Regards, Jeffrey ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: 1.5.97 first impression
On Sun, 3 Jun 2001, Jeffrey W. Baker wrote: > Okay I'll have a look at it with strace. Maybe it is stalling on > something really stupid like name resolution. Right. It is blocking on opening and reading /dev/random. Perhaps an upgrade to Guile 1.4 will fix that. k ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: 1.5.97 first impression
On 03 Jun 2001 23:53:48 -0700, Jeffrey W. Baker wrote: > 1.3.4, which came with my distribution. I'm not advised on the life cycle > of Guile development. Is it prudent to upgrade? Guppi congratulates me > on NOT having an ancient Guile when I run its configure script :) 1.3.4 should be fine. dave ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
Re: 1.5.97 first impression
On 03 Jun 2001 23:55:49 -0700, Jeffrey W. Baker wrote: > On Sun, 3 Jun 2001, Jeffrey W. Baker wrote: > > > Okay I'll have a look at it with strace. Maybe it is stalling on > > something really stupid like name resolution. > > Right. It is blocking on opening and reading /dev/random. Perhaps an > upgrade to Guile 1.4 will fix that. Strange. This is guile reading from /dev/random? dave ___ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnumatic.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
