[Kmymoney-devel] Simplifying the transaction form

[Alvaro Soliverez]

Hello all,
this is a mail to start a discussion, propose some alternatives and do
something about it or maybe do nothing if we feel comfortable with the
current situation.

During the port it was clear that the code underlying the transaction
form (eg. the widgets where you enter a transaction on the ledger
view) was very complicated, and some design decisions were made at the
time that are no longer valid on KDE4.

For example:
- different widgets are used for viewing and editing. To deal with
this, several tricks have to be made otherwise the widgets are visible
behing one another
- the transaction type (deposit, transfer, withdrawal) has each its
own tab, which leads to copying the widgets from one tab to the other
when changing the transaction type. Changing that to a combobox or a
radio button would avoid several issues and remove a pile of code.
- regular transactions and investments have different widgets for the form
- the visibility of the widgets is problematic. we still have a bug
open on that for investments
- automatic transaction fill has proven to be troublesome

For the future, we have some features related to the transaction form,
like tags and transaction templates. Having a more lean and
straightforward code would help a great deal to get these features
into the existing code without causing big headaches.

How I see this change happening:
- Use the same widgets for viewing and editing (disable as needed)
- Hide the widgets that are not needed
- Use layouts to have the widgets rearrange themselves shen hiding/showing
- Revisit usability issues in the process (transaction date, anyone?)

Perhaps we should do it first for regular transactions, and later for
investments.

My gut feeling is that we should do this before trying to add even
more features into the ledger or we'll suffer swift punishment. Today,
I feel dizzy when I have to fix in there.

Regards,
Alvaro