GnuCash's new reconciliation behavior

[Sam Varshavchik]

I just experienced a slightly unexpected, new behavior of GnuCash's account  
reconciliation dialog. Doing a quick check of my package installation  
details, looks like I had GnuCash updated two weeks ago, and I guess this is  
the first time I reconciled an account since then.

It seems that after clicking a transaction, to mark it as reconciled, what  
happens now is that not only does the little checkbox next to the  
transaction gets set, but the entire transaction gets shuffled to the bottom  
of the transaction list, so that all reconciled transactions always appear  
after the unreconciled ones.

So: as I go through my account statement, and check off each transaction,  
each action appears to result in the transaction list getting reshuffled.  
Even though I might already be eyeballing the next transaction to check off,  
already, by the time I get to it, it's …somewhere else.

Digging through GnuCashs's preferences, I don't find any option of reverting  
to the previous behavior, where I click each transaction to reconcile, and  
this simply sets the checkbox next to it, without the entire transaction  
list jumping around like something on a bad acid trip.

So, it looks like GnuCash took years' worth of existing UI behavior, and  
just ripped it out and replaced with a UI that looks nearly identical but  
acts in a completely different, and unexpected way.

Who do they think they are? Gnome?

[Ron Yorston]

Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> It seems that after clicking a transaction, to mark it as reconciled,
> what  
> happens now is that not only does the little checkbox next to the  
> transaction gets set, but the entire transaction gets shuffled to the bottom  
> of the transaction list, so that all reconciled transactions always appear  
> after the unreconciled ones. 
Were the transactions originally sorted in date order, as they used to be?

On my system with gnucash-3.1-3 transactions in the reconciliation dialog
appear in some order which defies logical anaylsis.

Ron

[Sam Varshavchik]

Ron Yorston writes:

>  Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>  >It seems that after clicking a transaction, to mark it as reconciled, what
>  >happens now is that not only does the little checkbox next to the
>  >transaction gets set, but the entire transaction gets shuffled to the bottom
>  >of the transaction list, so that all reconciled transactions always appear
>  >after the unreconciled ones.
>
>  Were the transactions originally sorted in date order, as they used to be?
>
>  On my system with gnucash-3.1-3 transactions in the reconciliation dialog
>  appear in some order which defies logical anaylsis. 
This is nothing more than change for the sake of change, when an application  
reaches a feature-complete state, like GnuCash did. At this point you often  
see the application start changing in random, nonsensical ways only to be  
able to increment its version number and mumble something in a ChangeLog.  
Let's see: the reconciliation dialog is simple, and it works intuitively,  
and has been this way for many years. That's no good, it must be changed in  
some farsical way. I know, let's use a random number generator to order the  
transactions, and each time you reconcile one, let's scramble the list again! 
That's worth a major version increase, doesn't it?

It's so much better than having to address long-term pain points, like being  
able to print more than one check without having to click your heels three  
times and repeating to yourself "there's no place like home".

Oh, and I almost forgot: let's change all the icons just to make them  
different, and have absolutely no bearing to what they do; like a gear icon  
for finishing the reconciliation. Previously that was some kind of a  
checkmark icon. Well, the new checkmark icon does something else! This'll  
make sure that everyone has to mouse over each one, in turn, and wait for  
its tooltip to come up, until they find the one they want.

[Ron Yorston]

Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> Ron Yorston writes:
> > On my system with gnucash-3.1-3 transactions in the reconciliation dialog
> > appear in some order which defies logical anaylsis.
>
> This is nothing more than change for the sake of change, 
No, I think it's just a bug.  I couldn't see anything in GNOME Bugzilla
related to the sort order of the reconciliation dialog.  After rummaging
through their git repo, though, I did find this commit:

   https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/commit/836705f98087ec7bf9418cef71af939...

which refers to the not-obviously-related bug 795101 'Scroll Bar in
Reconcile Window Floats in and covers the check boxes':

   https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=795101

It seems they changed the order of the columns in the dialog but not the
number of the column that was being sorted by default.  So transactions
are being sorted by their reconciliation status instead of date.  The
dates are probably just being ordered by however they come out of the
database.

The fix should be in 3.2.

Ron