Hello Jim,
Let me explain in more detail. On my Windows machine, I wanted to
upgrade to the latest release version, maybe 5.14 and not 5.15.
When I installed this version, the SQLite file would not open because it
was using the old folder in |%APPDATA%| that had been created by the old
version (5.5).
When I removed (or renamed) this folder and let the new version create
its own folder, the SQLite file finally opened. However, some characters
in the accounts appeared incorrectly, such as “,” because I use the
French version.
It looks like an encoding issue.
I don’t know how to fix this or how to make both my GnuCash applications
on Linux and Windows use the same encoding. After this experience, I
went back to the old version, restored the old |%APPDATA%| folder, and
everything was fixed naturally.
That being said, the second issue I mentioned is the path problem:
I want to use an absolute path so that attached files can be opened on
both Linux and Windows.
I know that the path separator is not the same character on Linux and
Windows. For now, I only manage attached invoices on my Windows machine,
and this has been done from the beginning using an absolute path.
I have remote access to this machine, so using relative paths would also
be fine. I think GnuCash may not handle the Windows path separator
correctly, because on my Linux machine I looked at a path stored by my
Windows machine and the “/” was replaced by “_”, which cannot work anyway.
The idea is that if I clone my repository on a Windows machine, the
files can be found easily. If it also works on Linux, that would be a plus.
I think my first post was not clear. I am sorry for the misunderstanding.
Regards,
Tarik
Le 28/12/2025 à 22:23, Jim DeLaHunt a écrit :
Hello, Tarik:
Welcome to GnuCash. I hope you will be able to get useful help on this
list.
On 2025-12-28 08:31, tarik semrade wrote:
Hello,
I am a GnuCash user and I use GnuCash on two machines: Linux and
Windows.
I switched to the SQLite file format in order to use a Python library
and be able to test and parse the SQLite database.
One issue I am facing concerns the use of *absolute paths on
Windows*. When I started using GnuCash on Windows, I attached files
using absolute paths. After some time, I realized that Windows paths
could cause problems: when I open my book on another machine, the
linked files are not recognized.
For this year, after resetting all the accounts, I want to start a
new year with a more flexible method, since I use GnuCash from both
Linux and Windows.
I used to use GitHub to synchronize the files. The GnuCash version on
Windows is 5.5, while on my Ubuntu 25 system I use version 5.15. The
book opens correctly without issues on both systems. However, one
thing I tested was updating the Windows version of GnuCash to the
latest release to match my Linux machine. I noticed that when I open
the book with the latest Windows version, some strange characters
appear. I reinstalled the 5.5 version since it works good.
If you have any recommendations to help resolve the issue with linked
file paths, I would be very grateful.
I did some work on the file paths for my transaction attachments, so I
have some idea of how these paths work in GnuCash. I can offer hints,
but not a full solution.
It would help if you could give examples of these "strange
characters". Can you give a screen of what they look like, and what
you expect to see if there are no "strange characters"?
What originally saved the paths with these strange characters to your
GnuCash file? Was it GnuCash 5.5 on Windows, and now GnuCash current
version shows strange characters on those same paths? Or is it just
paths which you saved using GnuCash on Linux which appear with strange
characters in GnuCash on Windows current version?
I don't know if the GnuCash app makes promises that attachment paths
work across platforms. I do know:
* Absolute paths are unlikely to work, because the roots of absolute
paths are different on Windows and Linux (e.g. "C:\Users" and
"/usr/". So, using relative paths to attachments is more likely
to work.
* Windows and Linux use different path separator characters ("\" and
"/").
* Windows and Linux use different character code conventions to
store path names (16-bit UTF-16LE and 8-bit UTF-8).
It is possible that GnuCash code makes an effort to smooth over these
differences. It is also possible that it makes no particular effort.
If you are comfortable reading software source code, you could read
the GnuCash source code to try and find out.
I hope this helps you take some steps forward. Best regards,
—Jim DeLaHunt
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