On Sun, 21 Nov 1999 20:59:53 CST, the world broke into rejoicing as
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
> It's been rumoured that Rob Browning said:
> >
> > "Rob Coker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >
> > > While I've put my $0.02 on everything else, I'll add that I'd really
> > > like to see the native format of reports to be text (preferably
> > > comma delimited). One could site all the unix-philosophy reasons
> > > for doing it this way, but the bottom line for me is that I can then
> > > use any spreadsheet to format it however I want.
> >
> > Hmm, I'm not sure what you mean by the "native report format". When a
> > report is generated, it's just spit out as html. Generating
> > comma-delimited data would be a separate (though similar) process. If
>
> My vision for having the html reports is that gnucash could supply a
> default 5 or 10 reports, and then allow users to create hundreds of
> custom report 'filters'. If one of these was CSV, that shouldn't be a
> problem.
>
> Note that the abopve vision has to have some way of allowing the user to
> specify a custom filter that they created.
When spitting out HTML, I'd *strongly* urge doing something like what
is attached below.
The critical things to note have to do with the metadata that I'm
attaching to the various tags:
1) Up top, information presents in pretty full detail the nature of
the report in terms that could be parsed out by searching metatags.
What I've got there is incomplete; there should be metadata included
to indicate such things as:
--> When the report was generated;
--> If there are 15 different reports, which of those reports it is;
--> The selection criteria used to generate the report.
2) There are CLASS and ID tags in the body. These allow some notable
things:
--> The ID allows having links between transaction components, so
that if there happens to be both sides to a transaction in a
report, you *could* have <A HREF="#T12341821"> Salary </a> to
link back to it.
--> By having an ID, this offers a route for the HTML browser to
(perhaps) "drill" back to GnuCash. e.g. - you double-click on
the transaction, and GnuCash jumps to that specific transaction.
Yes, this involves some "rocket science." That ID needs to be
like unto a CORBA IOR, a somewhat permanent ID for the split, in
order for this to work.
--> The "class" provides the ability to have a CSS file that
controls how the data is rendered. This could provide a way of
allowing the user to control this; you go to a dialog that
allows properties to be set for different report classes for
different fields, and this would result in generating custom CSS
files.
--> CLASS info can be used to "publish" what the data in a particular
field is supposed to be. THAT means that someone that parses
the HTML file can infer what is in a given field with much
greater confidence. This amounts to getting much of the
benefits of XML, "for free."
Suggestion: There probably should be a function set up for each field
the engine has that can render it.
Thus:
enum { HTML, TEXT, XML, RDB };
struct output_form {
int type;
/* Possibly with openings for extra data structures should they be
needed, or with further different behaviours based on which
report is being written */
}
/* Rendering functions */
char *render_split_amount(Split *split, struct output_form);
char *render_split_memo(Split *split, struct output_form);
char *render_split_description(Split *split, struct output_form);
By keeping an API in the way, this encourages the multiple output
forms to have some similar behaviour...
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="GnuCash version 3.2">
<link rel="stylesheet" title="normal" type="text/css" href="gc.css">
<LINK rel=top href="general-ledger.html">
<LINK rel=glossary href="http://www.gnucash.org/glossary.html">
<title>Sample Report </title>
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Christopher B. Browne">
<meta formatter="insert_html_templates, by Christopher B. Browne">
<body bgcolor=white text=black link=red vlink=maroon alink=fuchsia>
<TABLE border="1" class="TXNDETAILTABLE">
<tr>
<th align="LEFT" valign="TOP"> Date </th>
<th align="LEFT" valign="TOP"> ID </th>
<th align="LEFT" valign="TOP"> Description </th>
<th align="LEFT" valign="TOP"> Category </th>
<th align="LEFT" valign="TOP"> Amount </th>
<th align="LEFT" valign="TOP"> Reconciled? </th>
</tr>
<tr class="TXNDETAIL" id="T12341821">
<td align="RIGHT" class="DATEYYYYMMDD"> 1999/01/01 </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="ITEMCODE"> DDP </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="DESCR"> Salary </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="ACCOUNT"> Salary </td>
<td align="RIGHT" class="CURRENCY"> 1450.72 </td>
<td align="RIGHT" class="RECONCILED"> C </td>
</tr>
<tr class="TXNDETAIL" id="T12341241">
<td align="RIGHT" class="DATEYYYYMMDD"> 1999/01/02 </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="ITEMCODE"> 102 </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="DESCR"> Joe the Landlord </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="ACCOUNT"> Rent </td>
<td align="RIGHT" class="CURRENCY"> 600.00 </td>
<td align="RIGHT" class="RECONCILED"> C </td>
</tr>
<tr class="TXNDETAIL" id="T12142841">
<td align="RIGHT" class="DATEYYYYMMDD"> 1999/01/03 </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="ITEMCODE"> 103 </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="DESCR"> Texas Water Source </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="ACCOUNT"> Water </td>
<td align="RIGHT" class="CURRENCY"> 25.00 </td>
<td align="RIGHT" class="RECONCILED"> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="TXNDETAIL" id="T22842241">
<td align="RIGHT" class="DATEYYYYMMDD"> 1999/01/05 </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="ITEMCODE"> ATM </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="DESCR"> ATM Withdrawal </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="ACCOUNT"> ATM </td>
<td align="RIGHT" class="CURRENCY"> 100.00 </td>
<td align="RIGHT" class="RECONCILED"> </td>
</tr>
<tr class="TXNDETAIL" id="T242822141">
<td align="RIGHT" class="DATEYYYYMMDD"> 1999/01/09 </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="ITEMCODE"> ATM </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="DESCR"> ATM Withdrawal </td>
<td align="LEFT" class="ACCOUNT"> ATM </td>
<td align="RIGHT" class="CURRENCY"> 120.00 </td>
<td align="RIGHT" class="RECONCILED"> * </td>
</tr>
</TABLE>
</HTML>
--- gc.css ---
/* Style Sheet */
/* $Id: stdstyle.css,v 1.3 1998/09/19 13:55:04 cbbrowne Exp cbbrowne $ */
BODY{ background-color:#EEFFEE;
background-image: url(http://www.berlin-consortium.org/background.gif);
background-repeat: repeat-y;}
/* Apologies to Berlin folk; I'll soon fiddling with this further to cut
down on their traffic... */
SPAN.indent{margin-left:0.4in;}
/* This may be a bit excessively loud... */
H1, H2, H3, H4 {font-family: Optima, Lucida, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:
green; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bolder; }
/* Utopia, Helvetica, Optima, Lucida Typewriter */
H1{ font-size: 18pt;}
H2{ font-size: 16pt;}
H3{ font-size: 14pt;}
H4{ font-size: 12pt;}
/* And make the main title big, centre it */
H1.title {font-size: 24pt; text-align: center; color: maroon;
background-color: transparent; font-family: Optima, Lucida, Helvetica,
sans-serif;}
/* Similarly, fiddle with address info at the top of the page */
P.author, P.affiliation {font-weight:bold; font-family: Optima, Helvetica,
Arial, Sans-serif; text-align: center;}
P.affiliation {font-size: 8pt}
DEL {font-weight: bold}
INS {background-color: white}
/* Fiddle with the headers; shrink left/right stuff, grow the main title */
DIV.NAVHEADER TH {font-size: larger;}
DIV.NAVFOOTER TH {font-size: larger;}
DIV.NAVFOOTER TD {font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: smaller;}
DIV.NAVHEADER TD {font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: smaller;}
/* DocBook Table of Contents handling */
DIV.TOC {font-size: 8pt; text-indent: 3em;}
P.TOC {font-size: 8pt; text-indent: 3em;}
B.COMMAND {font-family: courier,monospace; font-weight: normal;}
/* Zowie way of presenting PRE stuff */
PRE,TT.LITERAL,P.LITERALLAYOUT{ font-family:Lucida Typewriter, Courier,
monospace; font-weight: normal; background-color: gray; color: white;
border-width: thin; white-space:pre; }
/* Color selection:
aqua black blue fuchsia gray green lime maroon navy
olive purple red silver teal white yellow */
TABLE.TXNDETAILTABLE {
background-color lime;
}
DATEYYYYMMDD {
color: olive;
}
--
"Without insects, our ecosystem would collapse and we would all die. In
that respect, insects are far more important than mere end-users."
-- Eugene O'Neil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
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