In documenting the reports included with GnuCash, several reports appear mostly to be proof of concept reports that demonstrate the kinds of reports that can be built. As GnuCash has matured, however, fewer users appear to be interested in writing their own reports, as demonstrated by the dearth of new reports being submitted for inclusion in GnuCash. Rather than include these reports in the main GnuCash package, I would propose having these be stored on the Wiki, with the documentation pointing interested users there. That way, the reports would still be available to the few that are interested in developing new reports. To this end, I would recommend the following reports be removed from the default reports package, and moved to the wiki: Average Balance Expenses vs. Day of Week Income vs. Day of Week Sample Report with Examples
Hi David, What do you mean by 'moved to the wiki'? You cannot use the wiki as a file server. You can list the report scheme code in a page but they are too long for that to be useful. Regards, Chris Good
Indeed. We could move them to an examples directory in the sources where they could quietly rot away. Or we could just remove them from the menu and leave them where they are. That way the compiler will make sure that we keep them at least build-able. The wiki article on writing custom reports can tell people where to look for them.
Chris, looking at the wiki didn't suggest to me that length was an issue. There are plenty of long pages there already. As for John's suggestion to leave them in place or put them in an examples directory, I like putting them into their own directory. That way, they wouldn't be mistaken as "standard" reports. But removing them from the menus achieves my primary goal, too.
The issue is mostly that a wiki isn't a very good place to park code. I was originally thinking of an examples directory at the root level, but on reflection src/reports/examples would work as well and if it's there we can still build the reports as a QA check so they won't bit-rot too badly.
I would suggest to use the (existing) src/report/utility-reports/ directory as a container for all non-standard reports. On top of that: I would opt for a Report Configurator in the Tools menu that searches the src/report/utility-reports/ directory for available non-standard reports and offers the user tick boxes so he can select which reports to add to the Report menu, and which not. Simply hiding them away would not be my preferred choice, which is especially valid for the Sample Report with Examples.
