CashBook Updates (at last)

I have nearly a month of real-world accounting data now so I will use that as a basis for testing the new version and get back with any problems!

Thanks for all the feedback – while development is continuing, I’ve rolled the completed improvements and bug fixes into CashBook 1.37 and released that.

It will be on the charity CDs at Saturday’s show.

Thanks Steve and have fun on Saturday!

I haven’t managed to test any more as I had promised but have downloaded 1.37 now, backed up my data and then switched to that version – will post any problems back here if I see any!

I’m assuming the interest rate stuff didn’t make it into this release? Do you have a build with the interest rates enabled? I’d be happy to test that with one of our accounts…

I’m still planning to use it, but I must read the documentation carefully to be sure that my specific needs will have an answer. I don’t have enough time…

Thanks Steve and have fun on Saturday!

Thanks!

I’m assuming the interest rate stuff didn’t make it into this release? Do you have a build with the interest rates enabled? I’d be happy to test that with one of our accounts…

It didn’t… There’s still a fair bit of work to do on the actual interest stuff: so far, I’ve done a lot of enabling (mainly moduarising existing code such as the data entry from the transaction table, so that it can be used in more than one place), but not much implementing. I’m now targetting a Wakefield release, but I’m likely to be fairly busy with other things.

The problem with CashBook, being the first thing that I wrote in C for RISC OS, is that just looking at the older bits of the application tends to end up with me re-writing them so that they’re less scary. On the plus side, this does mean that 1.37 should be a lot less likely to take out your machine when it encounters a corrupt file or runs out of memory while adding a new account.

:-)

So, six months on I’ve finally found enough time to allow me to get the changes to CashBook that I started work on before February’s show to build into something that runs…

There’s still no new functionality, but the analysis report system has been completely re-written to make it more modular and remove the significant code duplication which it has always relied on. As with the previous changes, the reason is to improve maintainability and allow new functionality (in this case, new reports) to be added.

There’s a new build (r4262 at the time of writing) up at http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/software/test/#cashbook and once again I’d really appreciate people trying to break it.

The file format has changed since version 1.37, so please back up any important data before loading it into these builds. Files saved from test builds will load back in to earlier versions (with a warning about data loss, due to the new interest rate data), but the work done on the analysis report system means that I wouldn’t like to guarantee that it won’t delete or mangle all of your saved reports. At present, even I’m just using the test builds on copies of my accounts data in parallel with 1.37, to make sure that they behave the same way…

And a further five months later, another set of changes to CashBook have reached the stage that they’re actually testable…

This time around, there is some useful (I hope) stuff to test and play with:

• A re-written report viewer, adding grid lines around tabular data, a “page view” to show how the information will spread across pages, and a toolbar to make it all easy to fiddle with (and for me, a far better layout engine and vastly more maintainable code behind the scenes). It’s still rough around the edges, but seems to work.

• Zero balance accounts and analysis headings can appear in transaction report summaries if required.

• Items pasted to the transaction window from the clipboard now stick properly (oops), and it’s possible edit dates without the caret jumping around (also oops).

There’s a new build (r4561 at the time of writing) up at http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/software/test/#cashbook and once again I’d really appreciate people trying to break it. Problems with printing from the new reporting system are of particular interest, as there’s very little of the old code left.

The file format has changed since version 1.37, so please back up any important data before loading it into these builds. Files saved from test builds will load back in to earlier versions (with a warning about data loss, due to the new interest rate data), but the work done on the analysis report system means that I wouldn’t like to guarantee that it won’t delete or mangle all of your saved reports. At least, compared to last August, I’m now using these builds for daily accounting again – but that’s still not a formal endorsement…

PS. People might have noticed that there’s some event or other happening next month. It’s a bit of a tall order given my cultural commitments between now and then, but in the light of the changes to the reporting system, it would be nice if it were possible to squash enough bugs before mid-February so as to be able to get a round-numbered stable release out in time for Somerset. That really does depend on getting practical, day-to-day use feedback on these test builds from CashBook users, though.

Well, it missed the South West Show, but I now have a build of CashBook that could almost be a candidate for a 1.40 release. Improvements, fixes and other changes are as follows (the headline being the new WYSIWYG reporting):

• Re-implemented analysis report system to make it modular and enable additional reports to be added.
• Re-implemented report viewer, adding new menus and toolbar. Page layouts can be previewed on screen when a printer driver is present.
• Allow a grid to be plotted around tables in reports and printed output (ticket #354).
• Allow print jobs to be sent to a report window instead of direct to a printer (ticket #300).
• Allow zero-balance entries to be included in transaction report summaries (ticket #601).
• Implement drag and drop between fields in the transaction window (ticket #629).
• Tidy up print dialogue and print protocol implementation.
• Remove all unbounded string operations from source code.
• Highlight the line over which Menu was clicked when menus can operate on items in a window.
• Fix bug which caused previous dates to be ignored when entering transactions.
• Fix unwanted caret movements when entering dates in the transaction window whilst an account view is open (ticket #630).
• Make changes to cell contents from the Global Clipboard stick correctly when the caret is moved to another cell (ticket #628).
• Correctly ensure that a C99-friendly version of the Shared C Library is present (ticket #632).

Copies of the current build can be downloaded from my website — any testing which people can do before mid-April will be appreciated, as otherwise the “stable” release will be no more stable than the current test builds!

There’s now a final release candidate for 1.40 available for download from my website – again, any testing that people can do between now and next weekend will be appreciated. In the absence of any feedback, r4647 will become CashBook 1.40 at the Wakefield Show…

Hi – I hope to Steve. Currently, however, I’m being attacked by Zombies…. I should have time on Tuesday.

Currently, however, I’m being attacked by Zombies….

Seems like a reasonable excuse! :-)

Something that neither I nor, it must be said, anyone who downloaded a test build prior to Wakefield, noticed was a bug which crept into CashBook’s next cheque number handling.

CashBook 1.40 corrupts the numbers, causing them to display as garbage – often just a string of zeros. I noticed this when I came to write my annual cheque last week…

As a result, CashBook 1.41 is now available to download from my website. It is a small, but very important, update to fix this bug.

The corruption is reversible, so I would encourage all users with CashBook 1.40 to carefully read the Upgrade140 file in the download archive before doing anything with the new version. I would also encourage users to upgrade soon, to avoid any ongoing confusion.

It turns out that another small bug crept into CashBook 1.40, which prevented paying in slip numbers from working correctly. Apparently only one person was using this feature, and presumably only once every 18 months or so, but it’s now fixed.

CashBook 1.42 is now available to download from my website and PlingStore. There are no other changes since 1.41.

However, I have also uploaded a new test build of CashBook. There’s no new functionality, but internally a lot of the user interface code has been re-written to avoid duplication and ease future development. A few bits of the UI are still broken, but it’s the version that I use daily so it seems fair to let other users try to break it too.

If you do try it out, note the comment about file formats, and take backups! Feedback on test builds from users is useful, because it helps iron out problems before they make it into stable releases.