Re: LedgerSMB 1.5.6 released

[ledger-smb-users <..hidden..>]

Hi, 

regarding 'blazingly fast', I'm still trying to set it up.
In essence I'll be trying to abuse the Memento Database UI's
template generating ability in that after reverse engineering
the format used by it, it could become possible to generate
one oneself.

The idea is to use the 'Radio Button' feature extensively,
rather than the concept of drop-down lists to select entries
for a field.

The table of accounts is in fact a structured list, which can
be translated into a general tree. From that tree, one can 
generate a template for Radio Buttons which would mostly
result in a sequence of selections to go through with one's
thumb (on a smartphone).

Let me visualise this highly conceptual blabber a bit:

Assume the following accounts:

assets
assets:banks
assets:banks:Citi
assets:banks:Citi:savings
assets:banks:Citi:checking
assets:banks:Citi:ATM
assets:banks:AIG
assets:banks:AIG:savings
assets:banks:AIG:checking
assets:cash
assets:cash:me
assets:cash:me:wallet
assets:cash:me:wallet:USD
assets:cash:me:wallet:EUR
assets:cash:wife
assets:cash:wife:wallet
expenses
income
liabilities

etc.

Then, when entering an account to record a transaction in the field,
your smarphone presents you a set of buttons to touch:

.assets  .expenses  .income  .liabilities

Assume you touch .assets with your thumb.
You'll then be presented the following:

.banks   .cash

(If you had touched   .expenses  you'd seen something else.)
Assume you touch .cash, you'll see

.me   .wife    and choose:   .me

Etcetera. For .expenses and all the rest you'll be presented
the relevant buttons for those choices and the following choices
you'll make.

I think that this way your accounts can be 'thumbed in' quite fast
withouth the trouble of scrolling through an extensive drop-down 
list or moving around a keyboard.
Of course, if there's any new account you would have to enter that
completely.


In the same manner, the products that you buy can be entered.
Let's say you do some groceries, they can be structured as well:

.Delhaize   .Carrefour   .AH   .Ikea

Touch .Carrefour:

.hardware   .food   .clothes  (touch food)

.vegetables   .fruit   .starch-based   .spices   .gels (touch gels)

.jam   .chutney   .preserve   .sambal... no, sambal is spices
(touch jam)

etc. 
up to the packing and units:

.box   .bottle   .sachet  (I know, you don't have this for beer)

(Grolsch beer): touch bottle

.300 ml    .500 ml    .1 l

No more typing, no more scrolling.

All this information can be obtained from previous purchases,
or entered as they are encountered for the first time.
The price from a previous 'encounter' can also be presented,
or re-entered if changed. The only thing you need the keyboard
then for is to type in the number of items bought, which will
probably default to 1 (or 12 in the case of beer :).

The nice thing about the Memento Database buttons is that they
can be made dependable on previously entered fields, so only 
buttons that make sense are shown to choose from.

After a day or so, the whole table can be exported and 
converted into the format readable by ledger.

I had planned to work on this the previous months when 
something more urgent came up, but with some luck within
some time I could pick up where I left soon.


One other thing that put me off about LSMB was the time lost
for inputting data. Oh, and also the difficulties installing
it on other platforms than the primary supported ones, and as
a result the difficulties with the frequent upgrades which
required additional work. That's why I was excited to see 
there's now a Docker container available.


regards



On Tue, 11 Apr 2017 21:26:49 +0200
Erik Huelsmann <..hidden..> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 2:54 AM, ledger-smb-users <
> ..hidden..> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 10 Apr 2017 20:20:50 +0200
> > Erik Huelsmann <..hidden..> wrote:
> >
> > > Will you be using Docker to run LedgerSMB?
> >
> > No I won't: I don't run LedgerSMB anymore.
> >
> > The 'trust breaking event' was some hundreds (or more) of
> > transactions mishandled because LSMB automatically marked
> > them for processing and 'assumed' my 'OK' when I tried to
> > leave that page, without any warning.
> >
> 
> Yes. I'm aware of that. Your reaction triggered me to think you were
> going to use it again as you were enthousiastic about the new
> possibility for installation.
> 
> 
> > I would have had to delve deep into the caves of
> > PostgresQL to try to fix that, and because also the
> > inputting (lots of clicking, dropping down and typing) of
> > transactions makes the process too slow to my liking.
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > I found ledger-cli which stores everything in human-readable
> > text files and it has enough features for me.
> >
> > And I found a rather quick way to input transactions on a
> > smartphone and am working now on a 'blazingly fast' way to
> > improve the speed (to reduce valuable time wasted on inputting).
> >
> 
> I think every user of LedgerSMB would be tremendously interested in
> having entry be "blazingly fast". Could you provide a bit more detail
> on how you achieve the fast entry? Maybe the entry methods in
> LedgerSMB can be adaped to allow it?
> 
> 
> > There is also no interaction with taxing departments that have to
> > be lulled into believing that once a transaction is registered
> > it can not be altered anymore. ;)
> >
> 
> Assuming you have a company, don't you have to file taxes? If you
> don't have a company, I'm very interested to learn why you keep books
> at all.
> 
> 
> > My interest in following this list comes from the fact that I
> > learned accounting through LSMB, and am secretly hoping that
> > one day I read an announcement that it has
> >
> 
> 
> > 1. become 'blazingly fast' to input transactions as they are
> > performed during the day, i.e.: 'on the fly',
> >
> 
> 
> > 2. and therefore also works on smartphones.
> >
> 
> So far I think this is a matter of process, not of tooling. Is there
> currently anything that's preventing you from doing this? I have
> actually used LedgerSMB on a tablet; I'm thinking the small screen of
> a phone will probably inhibit productive use of the UI in general
> (although I can imagine specific use-cases where a dumbed-down UI
> would work pretty well with mobile applications -- shipping and
> receiving comes to mind).
> 
> Again, I'm very interested to learn how you're solving the data entry
> problem on your phone at this point; hoping there's something to be
> learned for LedgerSMB.
> 
> 
> 
> 


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