On Sat, 2007-09-22 at 22:12 -0400, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: > On Sat, 2007-09-22 at 16:19 -0700, Ross Boylan wrote: > > Since submitting the bug and follow-up I decided the safest thing was to > > go with the flow and make the first split match the account in the > > register. Oddly, in one case when I tried that, it kept changing the > > *second* split to the ledger account. > > Yeah, it's definitely funky! > > > Aside from the changing of the split's account issue, the behavior when > > there are multiple splits with the ledger account in them seems weird. > > Both the dancing around of the values and the way the display turns into > > (apparently) two transactions seem undesirable to me. Even if it's not > > a code "bug" it seems a confusing design (i.e., changing it would be > > wishlist). > > Oh, this is not confusing at all if you know what double-entry is and > why it is. (And auto-split is for people who understand double-entry!) Well, I do, and it confused me. > > A transaction is a set of--let's call them "entries". Each line (each > split) is a single entry, and each entry must show up in some journal or > other. I assumed that a transaction is a set of related entries and that the visual display in the register provided a single head for a transaction, with the related entries grouped together.
I don't think this is strictly a matter of double-entry bookkeeping; it is a matter of some concepts on top of that and then the visual presentation of those concepts. This seems to me the natural mental model for what's going on. gnucash's interface violated that model. > > For a transaction which simply moves money from account A to account B, > it has two entries, and thus shows up in two journals: A, and B. > > If a transaction moves money from A to B, but moves it into B > twice--that is, say, a debit in A of $10, a credit in B of $4, and a > credit in B of $6, then there must be *three* entries, one in A (for > $10), and two in B (for $4 and $6). > > What would you have it put in B's journal in that latter case? It > cannot put $10, because there is no $10 entry to be found there. > B's journal, assuming you mean the raw data, would have 2 entries. But visually, the header for the transaction (which is all you'd see if you were in single-line mode) would should a credit in B of $10. The splits beneath it, when visible, would show the two separate entries. > Nothing about the display is "two transactions"; you have thought all > along that an entry is a transaction, but it's not, it's an entry. I was thinking that a transaction, substantively, was a set of related entries (I referred to them as splits in my earlier messages) and, visually, a header (which is 2 lines in the split view) with splits underneath it. > But > if you think about it, this was *always* true. Transactions have > *always* been showing up "more than once", and it never bothered you > before, because you were thinking single-entry bookkeeping and were not > thinking of matching credits and debits as being the *same* transaction. > > Thomas As I noted in my original report, the problem was not simply that one transaction appeared to become 2, but that there was a lot of jumpiness. The numbers being displayed changed depending on where I had my focus. And the transition from 1 to 2 transactions was itself a jump: line which had been in one place moved to another location. The very first time I ran into this issue the transaction I was entering appeared to disappear completeley in the middle of my data entry. I haven't been able to reproduce that. In my situation the problem only arose because a split's account got rewritten without my noticing (including cases re-rewritten after I changed the account back once!). But I suppose someone might want to have 2 entries for real. It also looks as if the comment that shows in the header comes from the entry related to the register's account. That procedure breaks down if the header has more than 1 entry for the register's account. Some ways of dealing with that are 1) display "multiple entries" or "multiple splits" as the comment in the header 2) pick one arbitrarily 3) concatenate the comments. Ross -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
