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smichael

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Pijul 1.0 Beta 5 years ago

Off topic: why does this happen ? I thought the point of Cloudflare is to prevent it.

Thanks for explaining. My thinking was: by (optionally?) allowing the usual extra characters (#!python3 -> #!/usr/bin/env python3) it remains standard, avoiding an unnecessary roadblock for existing scripts and programmer workflows.

PS: I also like your shorter syntax and would be happy if it became a cross platform standard - Shebang 2.0..

The linked Tour is part of the documentation, which at a glance looks extremely extensive. You mention some issues; are you saying these docs are too hard to discover and lacking a good-enough TOC or index ?

I mean I want to log income, spendings, exchanges in multiple currencies (or commodities), and then be able to see reports in a single currency -

All the major PTA tools support this - perhaps the chat could help ?

my net worth, my income over period of time, capital gains / losses.

The first two are easy, the third is more complicated but also possible - unrealized gains at least, I forget how easy realized gains are in the various tools, it might not be fully automatic.

Another advantage over spreadsheets I forgot: more guide rails and more common ground (shared practices, howtos, support) with other users. Spreadsheets are a tabular report construction kit, PTA is an accounting system construction kit.

ledger-mode in Emacs has some excellent account and description auto-completion (warning, may require a bit of configuration to suit your taste).

hledger add, hledger-iadd and hledger-web are some of the data entry uis with auto completion.

Alternatives: other ways of generating entries means less manual data entry, such as copy/paste in your editor, predefined templates (org-capture, yasnippet or equivalents), or conversion from bank csv data.

[PS I realize now you were asking for more than account name auto-completion, ie: filling in defaults for all postings (legs) when you reuse a transaction description. I don't know of many PTA tools doing this yet; hledger add is one.]

It is a good question to ask. You say the FAQ has addressed it... I guess it was not convincing ? (If you remember where, please point me to it..)

PTA tools, some of them at least, can scale well from beginner-level single entry accounting, or even zero entry "accounting" (just a list of dated event descriptions), to fully general double entry accounting that can model any financial event. I always encourage people to start out simple. What usually happens is they learn and become more interested and more sophisticated as time goes on.

So I would say one group of people this appeals to is people who want to get their hands dirty with Double Entry Bookkeeping, with the support of a lively and enthusiastic community, in order to understand it better.

Another is people who are expert with text editors, scripting and programming and want an accounting system where they can bring these skills and insights to bear.

Another is people who want total control and privacy of their financial records.

Another is people who want their financial data to be accessible and usable for a very long time (even without software, if it came to that).

Some possibilities:

* Use a version control system - keep journal files in eg a github repo; control access, manage pull requests, audit changes in the usual way.

* Use multiple files - the journal can be composed from multiple files, each with different filesystem permissions/accessibility.

* Maintain files on a server, and run a web UI like hledger-web or fava, perhaps behind a login form, to give read-only or add-only access to remote users.

You can use command-line hledger to produce the appropriate balance report data as CSV, suitable for gnuplot (or drag into a spreadsheet and use the charting tools there).

It would be good to measure that for the various tools. Things like balance assertions, balance assignments, valuation, may complicate the picture. hledger and beancount users, at least, do often split files by year to keep things in the "pleasantly fast" range.