On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 11:28 PM, Nathan Buchanan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > On 7/19/08, Charles Day <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> I'm going to go ahead and throw out another proposal for comments. I'm >> calling this RFC2. Unless specifically stated, all that follows refers to >> transaction posting dates and times only. >> >> Since to my knowledge the feature of having a "time zone per account" has >> not actually been requested by any user, I'm going to leave that >> completely >> out of this proposal. However, if there ever was a need for that feature >> in >> the future, this proposal is readily extensible to support that. > > > > First off, I agree that for most (maybe all?) cases the timezone per > account is not needed. That being said, I was a bit nervous removing the > option of adding timezones in the future, so I think this proposal better > addresses the needs without restricting things in the future. > > Here's what I was thinking. The general idea is to allow "date only" >> functionality, but also allow optional entry of a time of day: >> 1. Let there be a checkbox preference named "Show transaction posting >> times". Off by default. >> 2. When this preference is off, registers look the same as today; a time >> of >> day is not seen and cannot be entered. >> 3. When this preference is on, users can enter a posting time of day on >> any >> transaction, but do not have to. >> 4. For each transaction, if a time of day has not been entered then the >> GnuCash data file will only save the date. Otherwise, both date and the >> time >> of day will be saved. > > > This is likely to become messy in the datafile: some dates without times > and some with times. When we read this data in, we would have to keep track > of which dates have times and which do not. I'd think it would be much > simpler to create a default time and always write out the time (assuming, of > course, that the user had not specified a time). And since the timezone is > always known, there will never be any ambiguity or shifting dates. > I believe several users have expressed that they do not want a time written to their data file if they never actually entered one. That's one of the things I am proposing to support with this proposal. Saving defaulted transaction times would mean that when you read the file back in, you wouldn't know which times were user-entered and which times were defaulted. > 5. The user does not specify any time zone, and none is saved. > > > ok, though I'd advocate that the timezone be specified (and possibly saved) > as UTC. If we do not do this, the user may decide to change the timezone on > their machine while gnucash is open and possibly save different data than > was read in. > Under this proposal, the time zone on the machine is completely ignored. The time zone is a constant set internally by GnuCash. So changing the machine's time zone is not an issue. > 6. In case the user has some transactions with times and some without, and >> needs to sort transactions by posting time, let there be a preference >> exists >> to determine how to treat the transactions that do not have posting times. >> (Possible options might include treating them as if they had been entered >> at >> the beginning of the day, or at the end of the day, or at any specific >> time >> in between.) > > > I'd allow a default transaction time instead, as above. > > Sound good? Well, here's the part you may not like. All of the above can be >> implemented by GnuCash internally by use of a timestamp and a flag >> indicating whether the time of day was entered by the user. Let me >> explain: >> A. All timestamps would use the same time zone, which never varies. Users >> do >> not pick the time zone. It is hard coded and is never seen in the GUI and >> never saved to the data file. > > > Unless the user changes timezones with the file open... > GnuCash would ignore the system time zone. > > Nathan > > B. If a transaction is read from a data file and it contains both a date >> and >> a time, these are combined with the time zone from (A) to compute a >> timestamp. The flag is raised to indicate that the time of day was entered >> by the user. >> C. If a transaction is read from a data file and it contains only a date, >> a >> time of day is added on according to the preference indicated in (6) >> above, >> and these are combined with the time zone from (A) to compute a timestamp. >> The flag is lowered to indicate that the time of day was NOT entered by >> the >> user. >> D. To display the date in the GUI, GnuCash takes the time zone from (A) >> and >> the timestamp, and uses them to compute the date. > > E. To (optionally) display the time in the GUI, GnuCash takes the time zone >> from (A) and the timestamp, and uses them to compute the time of day. >> F. When saving a transaction to the data file, if the flag is raised to >> indicate that the time of day was entered by the user, then GnuCash writes >> the date and time of day to the data file. >> G. When saving a transaction to the data file, if the flag is lowered to >> indicate that the time of day was NOT entered by the user, then GnuCash >> writes only the date to the data file. >> >> My reasons for suggesting the continued use of timestamps internally are >> that it makes it very easy to sort transactions by posting time, and that >> the necessary code changes to get this done is still fairly small. So >> there >> is probably some reasonable chance of it actually getting done, which is >> an >> important factor to consider. Several of you who want to use "date only" >> internally have made fair points about simplicity, but I have made the >> point >> that the effort of getting from here to there would be much larger. So you >> would have to ponder the question of who would devote the necessary time >> for >> that larger effort. >> >> OK, now praise this, ask questions, or rip it apart (more likely) as you >> see >> fit. Thanks to everyone so far for remaining fairly civil while discussing >> this potentially incendiary topic. >> >> Cheers, >> Charles >> > -Charles _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
