Talk:GnuCash/Archive 1

"Transaction-Import Matching"

What is meant by "Transaction-Import Matching Support"? That sounds like a made up term. It would maybe be a good idea to elaborate. Imsdal 23:10, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

When you import financial transactions (from a QIF or OFX file, for example), GnuCash can find those that match (have the same date, dollar amt, and name). It might be jargon, but it is fairly common jargon & is what it sounds like it is. If you have a suggestion to make improve the clarity of the statement while keepint it concise, please fix it. --Karnesky 23:34, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I can't consider it "fairly common" since the only Google hit is for this page. Anyway, how about "Support for matching of imported transactions"? I don't want to change it myself, since I really don't know what I'm talking about, so my suggestion might be nonsensical. If this is a reasonable suggestion, then how about elaborating a bit on the matching part. What does it match? Transactions that I just imported that are duplicates of transactions that was already entered? Imsdal 13:04, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

The only google hit for the phrase "transaction-import matching" is this page, but "transaction import" and "matching" are both common. "Support for matching of imported transactions" would be accurate, but I personally don't think it is any more (or any less) clear (and "matching of imported transactions" leads to 0 google hits, if that is your criteria). I said what it matches--transactions (based on date, dollar amt, and name). If an imported transaction appears to be a duplicate of a transaction already in your register, the program will alert you. --Karnesky 13:36, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Image

The image is using the GIF format, could somebody upload a PNG of version 2.0 when it comes out? - bruce89 18:38, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Available on Debian and SUSE...

...amongst others, but isn't it available with just about any Linux distro, not to mention other unices? Isn't this just a bit of free advertising for Debian and SUSE? Prlewis0 08:02, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The suggested (but rejected) WP:SOFTWARE used inclusion in package repositories as one sign of notability & I suspect that whoever added that had good intentions (and probably just used the systems they were familiar with). That said: the very wide support of GnuCash would seem to suggest we should describe notability in some other way. If stats could be found, perhaps percentage of distros that have it (or, at least, the top xxx distros listed on distrowatch or whatever). Or maybe popcon results?

We can certainly afford to remove that line, but it'd be nice to replace it with info that described your objection (popularity in most distros). --Karnesky 14:31, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Part of GNU project? Or Gnome?

Does someone have evidence that this is actually part of the GNU project besides the name (which is inconclusive)? I see no evidence that the FSF considers this part of their project or that the GnuCash developers do (it isn't on Savanah, for instance). --Karnesky 15:53, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

As the lead developer of GnuCash for about 5 years, from its inception on 1 Nov 1997 (based on X-Accountant from summer of 1997), all the way through the founding and bankrupcty of Gnumatic Inc., I can attest that, yes, its officially a part of the GNU project. In the early years, I was trying to hype it up, and contacted RMS & GNU. I requested that GNU devote their development resources to GnuCash, as they were at the time planning their own, distinct package. I said "wait we already got one", RMS then grilled me on ideology and beleifs, and GnuCash was soon duly appointed as "official GNU". This occurred before the Gnome Foundation existed. The Gnome Foundation was launched in a big media launch in 1999 or 2000, I forget, and Gnumatic was one of eight(?) founding members. GnuCash was not originally a part of pre-foundation Gnome, as the earliest version of GnuCash used the Motif widget toolkit, and wasn't converted to gnome till later. FWIW I was also CEO of Gnumatic, and www.gnucash.org is within arms reach of where I sit right now--yes, I've been paying the internet bill for a decade now :-/ Oh, and the server averages 1GByte/day downloads, except when its slashdotted. Oh, and can someone *please* hit the American telecoms over the head, so that my internet bill can come down? Please? Because I'm paying wayyyy tooo much. linas (talk) 04:47, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Thumperwad also claims it isn't part of gnome, but it has sometimes been considered to be part of GNOME Office (though it isn't currently claimed to be part of it). --Karnesky 15:57, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

According to the README on GNU's FTP site, anything in this directory is part of the GNU project. And lookie here.

As for being part of GNOME, well, what is and isn't part of GNOME is still up for debate on Wikipedia, but it doesn't follow the GNOME release schedule and isn't hosted on gnome.org (two key indicators). Chris Cunningham 16:07, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks--I agree saying it is part of the GNU project is fine. I'd like to nail down what is part of GNOME. Can we generate better criteria? I don't think Gimp meets the key indicators, but there is a great deal of historical and developer overlap. Gnumeric is hosted on gnome.org, but AbiWord is not. --Karnesky 16:16, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

We've had this out on Talk:GNOME before. There really isn't an official line right now, and Wikipedia is (surprise surprise!) given to inclusionism on the issue. As it's provably part of GNU and only tenuously part of GNOME, going with GNU only is probabky better for now. Chris Cunningham 16:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Let me rehash what I said before. Gnucash was started before Gnome existed, and was initially based on the OSF/Motif widget set; it was called X-Accountant (xacc) at the time. There was an aborted attempt to try to put a KDE front end on it, and there were some heated discussions about licensing with Miguel de Icaza, who right around that time announced the Gnome project. Almost immediately thereafter, Gnome got announced on slashdot, and the fallout of the slashdot was that gtk people showed up on the gnucash X-Accountant mailing list. One was Jeremy Collins, who began the first port, in earnest, to get the X-accountant GUI running on gtk. I put in a major design effort to create the "checkbook register" as a kind of collection of cells, kind-of-spreadsheet-like, that would work the same way on *both* motif and gtk. I think it was one of the prettier things I'd ever created, but that's just me :-) Anyway, once the gtk port was mostly working, it became obvious that it was time for a name change. Proposals and balloting ensued, and GnuCash was the name that got the clear majority of votes (I think over a hundred people voted, if I remember right.). Shortly after the name change, Stallman wrote and said (to paraphrase): "Hey WTF, you can't just call it GNU, you moron! It has to be a part of GNU to be called GNU!" so I had to recite the GNU pledge of allegiance up and down and sideways three times while standing on my head, and it was then pronounced that GnuCash was an official GNU project, and it was OK to use that name. I don't remember if hosting at FSF was offered or not; I already had the xacc/gnucash web server in my house at the time, so didn't need hosting. About 2-3 years later, I participated in the creation of the Gnome Foundation, as the representative for GnuCash, and as CEO of a small company (Gnumatic) trying to commercialize GnuCash. The Gnome Foundation announce was a big media blowout, with front page articles in Wall Street Journal, and I think maybe NYTimes too. (thanks to Leslie Proctor) I think Miguel got interviewed by NPR. It was the one and only time in my life I stood in front of a TV camera while it was on. So GnuCash was there, affliated with Gnome, from the very beginning. However, the server was still located at my house, which was very convenient for many reasons -- and thus was never hosted at gnome.org -- there simply was no need. The gnucash wiki did go onto gnome.org, because I didn't want to host a wiki, perceiving it as a security threat and bait for spammers, and a head-ache all-around. As the above exchange demonstrates, self-hosting was actually sort of detrimental; later on, I once tried to say "GnuCash is part of Gnome Office" and a bunch of Gnome Office people wrote back (to paraphrase) "who the f**k are you, and what the hell is GnuCash?" and so that didn't really go very smoothly. I think if GnuCash had been hosted on gnome.org, it would probably have been automatically a part of Gnome Office, as a matter of course. But, by various twists of fate, it just sort of followed a parallel course, intertwining without getting married. Kind of like Quicken isn't owned by Microsoft, so everybody thinks that it's normal for GnuCash to be kind-of off to the side from Gnome. And I suppose that's OK. linas (talk) 03:04, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

p.s. As to Savannah, ... GnuCash was registered among the very first projects ever on Sourceforge (project 192, maybe), I think Jeremy Collins did the registration. ... I was corresponding with RMS shortly after Sourceforge was created, and somehow we talked about project hosting and I said how great Sourceforge was and he grumbled that it wasn't pure & was commercial and not honest & stuff, so I told him that this is serious business, projects need more than just an ftp site (which is all that gnu was offering at the time) -- they need bug trackers and CVS and web pages and wikis and etc. and that if he wanted to compete in this new world, he'd better get off his butt, and get GNU to offer something similar to Sourceforge. About half a year or year later, Savannah was born. I think someone asked me to make GnuCash one of the very first projects on Savannah, but stupid me, I said no thank-you, being self-hosted and all that. I suppose I should have spent more time running with the crowd. linas (talk) 03:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

WTF, Since I'm blathering deep history ... the creator of Xacc was Robin Clarke. He was a college student and wrote it in the spring or summer of 1997, maybe as an extended school project, maybe partly for home use. I discovered it in the late summer, after evaluating maybe 8-10 other Linux accounting programs, all of which were miserable. Xacc was the only one that 1) had a GUI and 2) actually compiled and sort-of-worked and 3) was written in C. So it was the best choice in my eyes. I fixed a few bugs in the fall of 1997 and had gotten past 26 bug fixes (used up all the letters in the alphabet) before December. Robin wasn't really interested in taking patches .. I think he did one or two releases with my code in it but got tired of my almost daily patchsets. I already had a web server at home by then, left over from an early failed dot-com, so I posted the xacc sources there; that server became the original xacc and gnucash web/mailing-list server; its still alive and powered on and currently serves up linas.org. Its a Dell 486-100DX I bought for Christmas 1994 (with 8MB RAM ... its maxed out with 96MB RAM right now, and a 6GB disk). Keeps on ticking .. why replace it? I think I quadrupled the size of the xacc code base shortly thereafter, and by the time the gnome port got done, the code size had doubled again. linas (talk) 04:25, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

...Wow. Thanks for all the background! Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:02, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Included in other programs?

Is this bundled or part of the source code used in other projects? how hard is it to do that. Can Open dental use the source code to improve its accounting section. 98.198.17.40 (talk) 04:43, 29 April 2008 (UTC)