[Kmymoney-devel] Re: New Java project and a currency query

[David Richardson]

I was also interested in this as a starting point for a portable-device 
version (perhaps with limited functionality) like I had with my previous 
commercial software.  Since Android tablets are all the rage right now, the 
Java implementation would appear ideal in this context.

Since I have just started using KMyMoney exclusively this year, I may be a bit 
out touch with the history of the project - has anybody done any work with a 
portable-device version before?

Thanks,

David Richardson

On 02/15/2011 02:23 AM, Andrew Heald wrote:
> Thanks, Thomas. Your explanation makes sense. I think it's enough to get me going and I realise this is why most currencies have 100, 100, 100 as the values because they have pounds/dollars and pence/cents.
>
> A bit of background: I save from KMyMoney as straight XML, rather than compressed, and write my files into an auto-versioning Subversion repository via a WebDAV mount (http://oreilly.com/opensource/excerpts/9780596510336/webdav-and-autoversioning.html). I do it this way so I can use a number of KMyMoney instances to edit the same data without getting mixed up as to content. It's also easy to roll back if I mess up, and it's sometimes interesting to see the history. I'm also running my own private Wiki, to which I auto-publish some generated pages.
>
> The first idea is to add a job to my Jenkins build server (http://jenkins-ci.org) that will fire up whenever KMyMoney data is saved to the repo, detecting the Subversion commits. It will summarise the data in various ways and turn it into a set of up to date report pages, and maybe spreadsheet attachments, which I can look at when I don't have KMyMoney to hand. The reports will be on things like unreconciled transactions, budget performance and cash flow.
>
> After that I'm considering a simple web app or Wiki plugin to enter cash transactions "on the run". This would be a Subversion client and commit with a real log comment to make it easy to spot these transactions in the history and tweak the details when back at base if they need cleaning up.
>
> I've also some half-baked ideas around budget management that are too ill-defined to be of any use yet.
>
> As much as I can I'll turn ideas I have into feature requests for KMyMoney itself.
>
> Best wishes,
> Andrew.
>
> On 14 Feb 2011, at 18:44, Thomas Baumgart wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> on Monday 14 February 2011 16:27:41 Andrew Heald wrote:
>>
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> I've joined the list after becoming an avid KMyMoney user. Greetings to
>>> you all. Great OSS product.   :-)
>>>
>>> I have a few "extras" that I want to implement, and being a Java
>>> developer I've written some code to read and update the XML files used
>>> by KMyMoney. The code (early days yet) is at
>>> http://github.com/sappho/kmymoney4j if anyone else is interested in
>>> using it or collaborating.
>> Can you explain a bit more what it does / is good for, please?
>>
>>> To this end I have a question about the
>>> attributes of the CURRENCY items in the XML. Can anyone point me to
>>> definitions of the "saf", "ppu" and "scf" attributes. I'll probably get
>>> there by guessing in the end but it would be much easier if someone
>>> could, in particular, let me know how I can use these attributes to code
>>> up currency conversions.
>> I can certainly give it a try:
>>
>> saf: smallest account fraction
>> scf: smallest cash fraction
>> ppu: parts per unit
>>
>> scf and ppu are only used for currencies not other securities.  From what I
>> remember the ppu information is currently unused but is setup.
>>
>> They are not used for currency conversions but rather give you information
>> about the smallest fraction that can be stored in a specific account. My
>> favorite example is the Hungarian Forint:
>>
>> scf is 1
>> ppu is 1
>> saf is 100
>>
>> which means they deal with one Forint as the smallest coin, but in your
>> checking account, the bank maintains 100th of a Forint as well. Other non
>> standard values can be found with some currencies used in the middle east.
>>
>> The list of currencies can be found in kmymoney/views/kmymoneyview.cpp
>>
>>
>> -- 
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Thomas Baumgart
>>
>> GPG-FP: E55E D592 F45F 116B 8429   4F99 9C59 DB40 B75D D3BA
>> -------------------------------------------------------------
>> Linux&  Open Source Software - aaah, the sweet smell of 'Free'dom
>> -------------------------------------------------------------
-- 

David Richardson   \   Imagine Whirled Peas
dsrich at ieee.org     \
These are my opinions - nobody else wants them.