Simon Michael
2018-09-17 16:24:31 UTC
Hi all!
I'd like to drop account codes, introduced in hledger 1.9 to control the display order of accounts. In my experience,
- they are tedious to maintain
- they duplicate/compete with the natural tendency to arrange account directives to match your mental chart of accounts
- they duplicate/compete with the tree structure created by account names
and it gets worse if you think about using them more extensively, eg to classify accounts by type.
Instead, I plan to just let the position (parse order) of account directives determine the display order of those declared accounts. Undeclared accounts will be displayed after declared accounts, sorted alphabetically as usual. (Draft doc below.)
Let me know if you see any problems with this idea.
### Account display order
Account directives have another purpose: they set the default display order for accounts in reports.
This works in a simple way: accounts which have been declared with account directives
will be displayed in the order that they were declared. For example, if you have top-level
`assets`, `liabilities`, `equity`, `revenues`, and `expenses` accounts, they would normally
be displayed in alphabetical order:
```shell
$ balance -1
assets ...
equity
expenses
liabilities
other
revenues
```
Whereas with these directives, in this order,
```journal
account assets
account liabilities
account equity
account revenues
account expenses
```
the display order will correspond:
```shell
$ balance -1
assets ...
equity
expenses
liabilities
revenues
other
```
Warning, this is work in progress.
It is supported by multicolumn balance reports in tree mode: `balance --tree -Y`, `incomestatement --tree -M`, etc.
It is not yet supported by
the `accounts` command,
the `balance` command in single-column mode,
any balance report in flat mode,
or hledger-web's sidebar.
I'd like to drop account codes, introduced in hledger 1.9 to control the display order of accounts. In my experience,
- they are tedious to maintain
- they duplicate/compete with the natural tendency to arrange account directives to match your mental chart of accounts
- they duplicate/compete with the tree structure created by account names
and it gets worse if you think about using them more extensively, eg to classify accounts by type.
Instead, I plan to just let the position (parse order) of account directives determine the display order of those declared accounts. Undeclared accounts will be displayed after declared accounts, sorted alphabetically as usual. (Draft doc below.)
Let me know if you see any problems with this idea.
### Account display order
Account directives have another purpose: they set the default display order for accounts in reports.
This works in a simple way: accounts which have been declared with account directives
will be displayed in the order that they were declared. For example, if you have top-level
`assets`, `liabilities`, `equity`, `revenues`, and `expenses` accounts, they would normally
be displayed in alphabetical order:
```shell
$ balance -1
assets ...
equity
expenses
liabilities
other
revenues
```
Whereas with these directives, in this order,
```journal
account assets
account liabilities
account equity
account revenues
account expenses
```
the display order will correspond:
```shell
$ balance -1
assets ...
equity
expenses
liabilities
revenues
other
```
Warning, this is work in progress.
It is supported by multicolumn balance reports in tree mode: `balance --tree -Y`, `incomestatement --tree -M`, etc.
It is not yet supported by
the `accounts` command,
the `balance` command in single-column mode,
any balance report in flat mode,
or hledger-web's sidebar.
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