FOSS Accounting [LWN.net]

FOSS Accounting

Posted Mar 22, 2004 21:36 UTC (Mon) by ccyoung (guest, #16340)
Parent article: CBTracker: a checkbook manager for the rest of us (NewsForge)

Instead of something lighter weight, I'd love to find a good mid-size accounting system, something along the line of MAS90 (speaking of a firm that should GPL), pgSQL in back, browser in the front, and pdf reporting. I have spent months looking, and IMHO nothing is ready for prime time.

<rant>The browser based products I've seen are unusable. Browsers now correctly handle dynamic forms and javascript correctly - there's absolutely no excuse for klutzy products out there.</rant>

IMHO, a decent accounting package is second only to an office suite in terms of lock-in.

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RANT!: Browser UIs

Posted Mar 22, 2004 23:20 UTC (Mon) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link] (1 responses)

Personally I think that browsers as a UI is a "bad idea"(TM).

However, Mozilla running a XUL "skin" is possibly not as bad.

I realize the attraction to a browser based system --- no client maintenance. Just middleware (browser) and backend (database).

However, browsers offer a terrible UI for application specific work. An HTML form is fine for simple forms that are used only occasionally by each user (typical of e-commerce). However, a professional using a tool intensively needs hotkey access to each form and field, and needs ways to search on almost any field or combination of fields --- just for starters.

Watch someone whois used an old MS-DOS or curses based accounting, inventory, or customer database application. Their fingers and fly across the keys the the screen can be a blur. Tap, tap, tappity-tap and ... Pop!
There's the data, transaction is one and they're ready for the next one. They barely have to glance at the screen.

Even using Javascript form elements I've never seen a browser based application approach a tenth of that productivity potential. Sure any idiot can come along and bumble through it, eventually. But no one is going to sustain 500 transactions a day through it. There are some businesses where that work (data entry) cannot be pushed out to the end usesr/customer.

Now, it's just possible that a XUL module for Mozilla might allow one
to create such an application. (It's possible it could be done all in Javascript and the *design* certainly could be done as a Java applet --- though the problem with this later is that a the JVMs under which applets run doesn't seem to have the requisite performance to handle that load and provide that response time).

I would be possible to deploy such a client on KNOPPIX or Morphix discs (CDs) and trivial to provide them across a thin client (network boot).

But enough on that rant. I'd just as soon see a top notch Python curses module implemented for forms processing. I understand that the GNUe people have been implementing some of that (I don't know how the curses end of it is doing).

JimD

RANT!: Browser UIs

Posted Mar 23, 2004 8:50 UTC (Tue) by tomsi (subscriber, #2306) [Link]

I can agree with you that using a browser for input-heavy UI's is a BAD idea.

I don't see what this has to do with CBTracker though, as the only browser related things are reports (Take a look at the screenshots on the CBTracker web page).

I think that HTML/XML as a report output format is a good thing though. I have made some substancial programs in Delphi (for Windows :( ) and that
tool made it easy to make good applications for heavy-duty manual input of data. The reporting tools sucked though, so it was easier to create HTML reports. For the few things that needed precise positioning on the printed page, I used the OS calls directly...

As CBTracker is made with Lazarus (a Delphi clone), it seems that Lazarus is getting to a state where it is usable. Lets get coding :)