> My plan is to make them configured in guile. One set for informal
> users, another for formal, with a preference to switch between
> them. If you want more control, you can put a new definition
> in your .gnucash/config.auto file. I don't want to mess with
> a GUI for this, since the two choices should be fine for most
> people and changing it is something you do rarely.
Is there much point in making accounting terms user-configurable?
You need to know what the original terms really mean in order to make
changes that aren't misleading--and if you do know, why would you
bother changing the terms? I think having "informal" and "formal"
settings are enough.
Moreover, this feature sounds like a support nightmare. When a user
whines: "The XXXX column in the register is messed up!", you no longer
have any guarantee that the user's XXXX column is the same one as yours.
The screenshots in the manual no longer have the same terms as the one
on the screen, which would be confusing. And so on.
I don't advocate making Accounting 101 a prerequisite for using GnuCash,
but I don't think it's too much to ask people to stick to GnuCash's
definition of some terms. There's something to be said about consistency.
Shimpei.
