[omaha] GnuCash and others

[Jeff Hinrichs - DM&T]

On 1/23/08, Jeff Rush <jeff at taupro.com> wrote:
> By coincidence I've just started evaluating GnuCash this week, to replace a
> homegrown system I wrote in Zope years ago and no longer have time to maintain.
>
> Jeff Hinrichs - DM&T wrote:
> >
> > After trying out all 3 I decided to go with gnuCash and it has been
> > acceptable to a point.  To clarify, gnuCash is solid and a decent
> > replacement for quick or money but it has a few blemishes in my
> > estimation.  1) It is written in C++/Guile/Scheme - fine, great
> > whatever works for you. but it makes it decidedly slow in getting
> > additional contributors.
>
> Yeah, I wish it was more accessible to Python as well.  Although reading the
> site, the interface to Scheme is via SWIG, so it wouldn't be too hard to
> re-run SWIG on the definition files and get a Python interface.  And then
> you'd have to document it for Python folks.
There is a project http://www.parit.ca/projects/pythongnucash that has
SWIG bindings and additional python code. I've not had a chance to
play with it.

>
> > 3)  Documentation for extending or adding reports is non-existent --
> > they point you to a couple of example reports but that is not much
> > help.  Even if you were a Guile pro it wouldn't help because there
> > isn't any docs on what is available to the reporting engine.
>
> And we need API docs to the GnuCash internals, even if we got Python hooked in.
>
>
> > Now it sounds like I'm really down on gnuCash -- and I'll admit I've
> > just slapped it around quite a bit  but compared to the other apps
> > available, both closed and open -- gnuCash is the reigning champion.
> > They do lots of things right -- there is a lot of experience with it
> > and a pretty active user mail list.
>
> One other attribute - GnuCash doesn't use a mainstream relational database but
> their own b-tree format that isn't really multi-user and hence not potentially
> web accessible either.  Doesn't matter for some folks.
>
Actually, gnucash 2.x uses an XML format and there is a project
http://www.nabble.com/python-parser-of-gnucash-file-td14736483.html
that use ElementTree to read the db.

The Multi-user dilemma is still a problem and will most likely remain
from what I've read in the lists.

-jeff