Skrooge Write up for the Digest

Sun Feb 6 09:04:24 CET 2011

Hi all 

Sending two versions of this. The second one is unedited the first I have shortened it a little and formatted it so it can be copied and  pasted easily 
to the Digest. let me know if I changed it too much (or too little I was going to take some other parts out) 

I know it's a little light on the actual development side. I was thinking of asking for more information on the parts left and perhaps taking out a few 
other sentences. If you would like to give credit, a direct link to the authour or would just like to get in contact the authour's name and e-mail 
address is Guillaume DE BURE <guillaume.debure at gmail.com>

1. History

<a href="http://www.skrooge.org">Skrooge</a> is a personal finances manager, comparable to <a 
href="http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net">KMyMoney</a>, <a href="http://www.gnucash.org>gnucash</a> and others.  In 2008 we, Guillaume DE 
BURE and Stéphane MANKOWSKI, colleagues in Airbus the European plane manufacturer, launched the project. At that time, KDE 4.0 had been 
introduced to the masses, with mixed feelings. We were already KDE enthusiasts, and felt KDE 4.0 was the way to go. 

KMyMoney, in those days, was KDE 3.5 based, and we had different ideas on some personal finances management, so we decided to give a try to 
developping a KDE 4 alternative, and called it Skrooge, inspired by Charles Dicken's tale "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol">A 
Christmas Carol</a>"

We were amazed by the reception from the KMyMoney guys: they could have see this project as a competitor, instead they immediately 
proposed cooperation, materialized by a "<a href="http://dot.kde.org/2010/07/15/successful-kde-finances-sprint-held">KDE Finances Spring 
Sprint</a>" in April 2010, and the launch of the <a href="http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KdeFinance/Alkimia">Alkimia project</a>. They did a 
great a job on that, by the way, while we have not been very active yet, let's hope we can do better in the future :).

Today, Skrooge is mostly developped by Stéphane, while Guillaume deals with communication such as this(and occasional development).

2. Capabilities

Skrooge is strictly focused on personal finances management. It is not intended to be capable of managing accounts for a small business or 
association. It will not handle taxes, or double entry system.

That being said, Skrooge is quite capable for what it is intended for. It has a few unique features that make it a bit different from other comparable 
apps:

* Persistent undo / redo, even after the file was closed
* Tabs based: you may open as many tabs you want (accounts, graphical reports, operations, categories...)
* Search & Process: user may define a set of rules to automatically transform some operations. Typically automatically assign payee or category 
after importing operations from your bank.
* Multi currencies
* Can import / export almost any file format out there

3. Current status

Skrooge is very stable, and almost feature complete. We are seriously thinking about releasing a 1.0! Though there is probably some work to do in 
simplifying the UI... We are very happy to welcome contributions if someone would like to <a href="http://www.skrooge.org/help">help</a>!

Some of the things we are currently working on are:
* Replacing our home made dashboard by a more generic plasma dashboard (some work started during GSOC 2010 by Siddharth Sharma)
* Finalizing the budget module that was introduced in the latest version (0.8.0)
* Update documentation (help wanted there too  )
* Enable Windows (through <a href="http://windows.kde.org">KDE on Windows</a> ) and MacOS versions (through <a 
href="http://mac.kde.org/?id=build">MacPorts</a>).

On the latter, we would especially appreciate it if someone with Mac experience could help us tackle some issues with our menus...

Finally a word about KDE, as a community: we are very grateful to you, developpers, translators, users for the help, support, and feedback over the 
years... You rock !!!

Guillaume & Stéphane

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. History

Skrooge is a personal finances manager, comparable to KMyMoney, gnucash and others. The project was launched in 2008 by us, Guillaume DE BURE 
and Stéphane MANKOWSKI. We are colleagues in Airbus, the European plane manufacturer, and enjoyed working together on some DMU tools[1]. At 
that time, KDE 4.0 had been introduced to the masses, with the mixed feelings that we all know. We were already KDE enthusiast, and felt KDE 
4.0 was the way to go. 

KMyMoney, in those days, was KDE 3.5 based, and we had different ideas on some personal finances management, so we decided to give a try to 
developping a KDE 4 alternative, and called it Skrooge. The  name is inspired by Charles Dicken's tale "A Christmas Carol" [2], where the main 
character, Ebenezer Scrooge, a grumpy old narrow man, gets visited by three ghosts who change the way he sees the world, in a good way.

We were amazed by the reception from the KMyMoney guys: they could have see this project as a competitor, instead they immediately 
proposed cooperation, materialized by a "KDE Finances Spring Sprint" [3] in April 2010, and the launch of the Alkimia project [4]. They did a great a 
job on that, by the way, while we have not been very active yet, let's hope we can do better in the future :).

Today, Skrooge is mostly developped by Stéphane, while Guillaume deals with communication (and occasional development).

2. Capabilities

Skrooge is strictly focused on personal finances management. It is not, and will never be, capable of managing accounts for a small business or 
association. It will not handle taxes, or double entry system.

That being said, Skrooge is quite capable for what it is intended for. It has a few unique features that make it a bit different from other comparable 
apps:

* Persistent undo / redo, even after the file was closed
* Tabs based: you may open as many tabs you want (accounts, graphical reports, operations, categories...)
* Search & Process: user may define a set of rules to automatically transform some operations. Typically automatically assign payee or category 
after importing operations from your bank.
* Multi currencies
* Can import / export almost any file format out there
* ... check out http://skrooge.org for more.

3. Current status

Skrooge is very stable, and almost feature complete. We are seriously thinking about releasing a 1.0 version, though there is probably some work to 
do in simplifying the UI... We are very happy to welcome contributions if someone would like to help !

Some of the things we are currently working on are:
* Replacing our home made dashboard by a more generic plasma dashboard (some work started during GSOC 2010 by Siddharth Sharma)
* Finalizing the budget module that was introduced in the latest version (0.8.0)
* Update documentation (help wanted there too  )
* Enable Windows (through KDE on Windows [5]) and MacOS versions (through MacPorts[6]).

On the latter, we would especially appreciate it if someone with Mac experience could help us tackle some issues with our menus...

Finally a word about KDE, as a community: we are very grateful to you, developpers, translators, users for the help, support, and feedback over the 
years... You rock !!!

Guillaume & Stéphane

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_making_unit
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol
[3] Link to KDE Dot story
[4] Link to Alkimia page on KDE Techbase
[5] Link to KDE on Windows project
[6] Link to MacPorts project