As a bookkeeping and GnuCash beginner, I have (had?) no clue what the different account types are or what the point in the differentiation is. Because I just wanted to "get the job done", I chose what made most sense to me, without knowing the differences. It seems like this hunted me later (see bug 128771) in subtle ways. There should be some way to quickly teach the user about the account types and which ones is the right one for his case. Help is not completely solving that problem either.* Of course, it should not get into the way of seasoned users. I don't have a concrete solution, sorry. * The Help - while I am glad that it exists (where filled out) - is long and users usually only read through the help, if they have a problem, not necessarily, if they just get started with GnuCash, too much to read all at once. I thus didn't have/take the time to read up on account types when I started using GnuCash. Maybe that was not a good decision, but I bet most users act like that.
This is still a problem with 2.0.x and its corresponding documentation, isn't it?
Ben?
I can't say. When I go on "Help" buttons or menu, I am told that the help cannot be found and I shall probably install package gnucash-docs, but it's installed. Maybe you can tell me whether clicking on "Help" button in the "New Account" dialog gives a sufficiently detailed explanation of the purpose of each account type, or there's a prominent link to the specific (!) section in the bigger help document. If not, this bug is still open.
Has this been true for 4 years or 11 years? At least in release 2.6.3 on Ubuntu from the Get-Deb repository the "Help" button is still broken in the "Preferences" dialog window, In fact, the text shown below is what I get from every help button including the two under the Help Menu button at the top of the GnuCash Window. This would irritate the (fill in the blank) out of new users. "Document Not Found The URI ‘ghelp:gnucash-help?acct-create#acct-create’ does not point to a valid page." I think that you can change the status from NEW to Ancient.
I did install four out of five GnuCash packages, only omitting the Debug package.
This bug has 2 aspcects: 1: Pressing Help in the "New Account" dialog (currently in 4.6) opens GnuCash Help Manual » Setting Up, Editing & Working with Accounts » Creating a New Account as expected. 2. "Document Not Found The URI ‘ghelp:gnucash-help?acct-create#acct-create’ does not point to a valid page." is handled in Bug 796852 - Context sensitive Help broken *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 796852 ***
