hledger/BACKLOG.org
2021-11-13 09:34:38 -10:00

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BACKLOG.org

An efficient public store of tasks/changes/design notes, mostly from SM's private backlog; things that I/we feel would be nice to have, or investigate further. Here, they all compost nicely in the sun. Some items are out of date and just need to be re-tested and discarded. All help is welcome.

See also:

Some items may render best when viewed in Emacs org mode.

Topics:

wip

move items here from SM's private backlog

cli

help: clarify/improve the various kinds of command line help
survey/describe

Most of these are long, and best viewed with a pager, eg: hledger -h | less

Quick command line help:
hledger     -h|--help
hledger-ui  -h|--help
hledger-web -h|--help
 General usage and command line flags for the main hledger UIs.

hledger
 hledger CLI's commands list.

hledger COMMAND -h|--help
 COMMAND's usage, flags, and manual section.
User manuals:
hledger help [-i|-m|-p] [TOPIC]
 View hledger user manual with info, man or pager, positioned at TOPIC.
 Good for jumping to a known (or guessed) topic.
 Good for viewing the manual if you don't have info or man.
 This is the main manual, covering the CLI, file formats, and concepts.

hledger --info
hledger-ui --info
hledger-web --info
 hledger, hledger-ui or hledger-web's builtin user manual, viewed with info.
 Best for exploring the topic tree.

hledger --man
hledger-ui --man
hledger-web --man
 hledger, hledger-ui or hledger-web's builtin user manual, viewed with man.
 Quick and searchable. 

info hledger, man hledger
info hledger-ui, man hledger-ui
info hledger-web, man hledger-web
 hledger, hledger-ui, or hledger-web installed user manuals.
 Same as above, if the manuals are properly installed on your system.

https://hledger.org/hledger.html
https://hledger.org/hledger-ui.html
https://hledger.org/hledger-web.html
 hledger, hledger-ui and hledger-web manuals, viewed on the web.
 Best for comfortable viewing and navigation when online.
help improvements
auto pager
colour
show commands to get more detailed help
list output formats
list input formats
list runtime-detected input formats
more intro/manual in the main help
commands list updates

Financial reports: aregister (areg) show an account's transactions and running balance register (reg) show postings in all/matched accounts and their total balancesheet (bs) show assets, liabilities and net worth balancesheetequity (bse) show assets, liabilities and equity cashflow (cf) show changes in liquid assets incomestatement (is) show revenues and expenses balance (bal) show custom balance reports, budgets, gains.. roi show a return on investment report

pivot: list possible arguments in help
version: include latest commit date
version: include git branch name if not master ?
disable colors when writing to .txt file ?
trailing colon makes alias ineffective

`alias expenses:personal:=expenses:`

unclear error if a trailing slash is written after file name

shell completion might wrongly add a trailing slash, eg as with this symlink, resulting in this unclear error: ~/notes$ stats -f current.journal/ hledger: SourcePos {sourceName = "Users/simon.sm/notes/current.journal/", sourceLine = Pos 9, sourceColumn = Pos 1} reading Users/simon.sm/notes/current.journal/2018.prices: /Users/simon/current.journal/2018.prices: openFile: inappropriate type (Not a directory)

-h/help should work even with unrecognised flags/missing args
hledger help ui watch
hledger ui watch help
hledger nosuchflag help
hledger nosuchcommand help
not expected to work; hledger help nosuchcommand does work
unify hledger help & hledger COMMAND help more ?
@ does not expand file names, eg @~/somefile
bad width parse error

$ hledger -f examples/sample.journal reg -w 80,-1 hledger: could not parse width option: ParseErrorBundle {bundleErrors = TrivialError 3 (Just (Tokens ('-' :| ""))) (fromList [Label ('d' :| "igit")]) :| [], bundlePosState = PosState {pstateInput = "80,-1", pstateOffset = 0, pstateSourcePos = SourcePos {sourceName = "(unknown)", sourceLine = Pos 1, sourceColumn = Pos 1}, pstateTabWidth = Pos 8, pstateLinePrefix = ""}} (use -h to see usage)

balance assertion error shows ugly transaction

hledger: balance assertion error in "/Users/simon/notes/2018.journal" (line 4949, column 54): in transaction: Transaction {tindex = 976, tsourcepos = JournalSourcePos "/Users/simon/notes/2018.journal" (4948,4950), tdate = 2018-09-01, tdate2 = Nothing, tstatus = *, tcode = "5VN72122C99690620", tdescription = "add funds to paypal", tcomment = "for:, time:06:53:51, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account , status:Pending, balance:6.99, gross:6.99, fee:0.00\n", ttags = [("for",""),("time","06:53:51"),("type","Bank Deposit to PP Account"),("status","Pending"),("balance","6.99"),("gross","6.99"),("fee","0.00")], tpostings = [PostingPP {pdate="Nothing", pdate2="Nothing", pstatus="", paccount="assets:personal:online:paypal", pamount=Mixed [Amount {acommodity = "$", aquantity = 6.99, aprice = NoPrice, astyle = AmountStylePP "L False 2 Just '.' Nothing..", amultiplier = False}], pcomment="", ptype=RegularPosting, ptags=[], pbalanceassertion=Just (Amount {acommodity = "$", aquantity = 6.99, aprice = NoPrice, astyle = AmountStylePP "L False 2 Just '.' Nothing..", amultiplier = False},GenericSourcePos "/Users/simon/notes/2018.journal" 4949 54), ptransaction=Just "<txn>", porigin=Nothing},PostingPP {pdate="Nothing", pdate2="Nothing", pstatus="", paccount="assets:personal:bank:wf:checking", pamount=Mixed [Amount {acommodity = "$", aquantity = -6.99, aprice = NoPrice, astyle = AmountStylePP "L False 2 Just '.' Nothing..", amultiplier = False}], pcomment="", ptype=RegularPosting, ptags=[], pbalanceassertion=Nothing, ptransaction=Just "<txn>", porigin=Nothing}], tpreceding_comment_lines = ""} after posting: assets:personal:online:paypal $6.99 balance assertion details: date: 2018/09/01 account: assets:personal:online:paypal commodity: $ calculated: $-93.01 asserted: $6.99 (difference: +$100.00)

color support like stack's (still a few things remaining)
http://no-color.org/ color should not be added by default if the `NO_COLOR` environment variable is present.
Existing global option `color=WHEN` is now also available as a

non-project-specific yaml configuration parameter `color:`.

Adopt the standard proposed at http://no-color.org/, that color should

not be added by default if the `NO_COLOR` environment variable is present.

New command `stack ls stack-colors` lists the styles and the associated

'ANSI' control character sequences that stack uses to color some of its output. See `stack ls stack-colors help` for more information.

New global option `stack-colors=STYLES`, also available as a

non-project-specific yaml configuration parameter, allows a stack user to redefine the default styles that stack uses to color some of its output. See `stack help` for more information.

British English spelling of 'color' (colour) accepted as an alias for

`color`, `stack-colors`, `stack ls stack-colors` at the command line and for `color:` and `stack-colors:` in yaml configuration files.

generate commands list more dynamically from command docs
names, aliases, descriptions
inconsistent repeated options behaviour: -b 1/1 -b 2/1 should use the last date & be documented
pass -h/help through to tasty
underquoted $ gives "empty list" error

$ bal --budget ^sm:exp date:jan -M cur:\$ tree Budget performance in 2019/01:

hledger: Prelude.maximum: empty list

1275 drop/depth error message followup

Two commands:

$ hledger bal --drop '-999999999999999' $ hledger bal drop='-999999999999999'

Current output: hledger: could not parse drop number: depth=999999999999999 (use -h to see usage) hledger: argument to drop must lie in the range 0 to 9223372036854775807, but is -999999999999999 (use -h to see usage)

My proposal would look like: hledger: drop's argument 'depth=999999999999999' must be a positive integer less than 9223372036854775807 hledger: drop's argument '-999999999999999' must be a positive integer less than 9223372036854775807

Variations: hledger: drop's argument '-999999999999999' must be a positive integer less than 2^63 hledger: drop's argument '-999999999999999' must between 0 and 2^63 hledger: drop's argument '-999999999999999' should be 0 <= N < 2^63 **

do recompile stack script addon if source is newer

ie, change: $ hledger check-tag-files # compiles if there's no compiled version

drop abbreviation uniqueness requirement ?
group common options as in CliOptions.reportflags
hledger: "date:monday-" gave a date parse error ()
improve error message:

hledger: balance assignments cannot be used with accounts which are posted to by transaction modifier rules (auto postings). Please write the posting amount explicitly, or remove the rule.

red color is bad on powershell navy background

``` Guest72 Hi, does anybody know how to change the negative value color in powershell. It's drakred and almost not readable on the dark blue background f-a not sure, but meanwhile using color=never could help Guest72 better than dark red ;) ```

show an extra newline after txt reports, for better display when showing one after another
show name of reader responsible for a parse error
ugly alias parse error

$ bal alias a hledger: parse error at ParseErrorBundle {bundleErrors = TrivialError 1 (Just EndOfInput) (fromList [Tokens ('=' :| "")]) :| [], bundlePosState = PosState {pstateInput = "a", pstateOffset = 0, pstateSourcePos = SourcePos {sourceName = "alias a", sourceLine = Pos 1, sourceColumn = Pos 1}, pstateTabWidth = Pos 8, pstateLinePrefix = ""}}

ugly parse error from malformed width argument

ghci> :main areg sm.*foo -w 350,50,50 Transactions in sm:assets:foo and subaccounts: 2020-01-01 * Exception: could not parse width option: ParseErrorBundle {bundleErrors = TrivialError 6 (Just (Tokens (',' :| ""))) (fromList [Label ('d' :| "igit"),EndOfInput]) :| [], bundlePosState = PosState {pstateInput = "350,50,50", pstateOffset = 0, pstateSourcePos = SourcePos {sourceName = "(unknown)", sourceLine = Pos 1, sourceColumn = Pos 1}, pstateTabWidth = Pos 8, pstateLinePrefix = ""}} (use -h to see usage)

non-empty standard input activates -f- if there is no explicit -f ?
invert should be supported by all commands
positive flips signs of normally negative accounts (liabilities, revenues, equity)

so eg both revenues and expenses sections of income statement are positive

pivot should work with all hledger tools (ui, web, api..)
warn about missing command rather than "unknown flag"

~$ hledger-0.27.1 -f src/hledger/data/sample.journal -D date:2008/01 hledger-0.27.1: Unknown flag: -D

balance assertion error improvements
show assertions in transaction

2016/04/01 * refill negative budget envelopes (personal) [assets:personal:bank:wf:checking:month:gifts] $69.56 = 0 [assets:personal:bank:wf:checking:month:food] $97.58 = 0 [assets:personal:bank:wf:checking:month:personal care] $80.00 = $1 [assets:personal:bank:wf:checking:available] $-247.14

show line/column number of assertion
show indication inline

2016/04/01 * refill negative budget envelopes (personal) [assets:personal:bank:wf:checking:month:gifts] $69.56 = 0 [assets:personal:bank:wf:checking:month:food] $97.58 = 0 <- failed, calculated: $7.12 (difference: +$7.12) [assets:personal:bank:wf:checking:month:personal care] $80.00 = $1 [assets:personal:bank:wf:checking:available] $-247.14

consistent/more headings for options
don't immediately convert auto-balancing amounts to the price's commodity
discuss on #ledger
example

1/1 a E4 @ $1 b ; <- should fill in -E4 @ $1 instead of -$4

ignore inapplicable common flags when harmless, eg width
help, info after +RTS and/or should be passed through
unreal opposite of real
pivot cleanups

https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/pull/323#issuecomment-185631456

add pivot to add-on option lists
move pivot example to its own section
reports should indicate whether each item has hidden subitems (and possibly include them in the report)
show abnormal-sign balances in red (rather than negative numbers)
split up output formats by command
html reports
add html output to other reports
register
postings
add view to open browser ?
add detailed mode or report generating register for each cell

compat

compat: support reading with beancount2ledger when in PATH
compat: support reading with ledger2beancount & beancount2ledger when in PATH

doc

doc: quickstart: update download instructions, make maintainable
CONTRIBUTING: a github API script to generate the open issues table with issue counts
automate CREDITS updating
./Shake credits
github commit links
github issue links
github images
a nice HISTORY page (higher level view of commits)
automate
./Shake history
doc: house mortgage

Chris Leyon, Ledger list 2021:

The entry for my house purchase looks like this:

2014-12-18 Buy house Assets:Fixed:House $445,000.00 ; Selling price of house Assets:Current:XYZ Bank:Checking $455.76 Expenses:Interest:Mortgage Interest $390.60 Expenses:Taxes:Property Tax $282.49 ; Current qtr taxes Expenses:Taxes:Property Tax $2,154.00 ; Next qtr taxes Expenses:Utilities:Sewer $18.45 ; Current qtr sewer Expenses:Utilities:Sewer $141.48 ; Next qtr sewer Expenses:House:Warranty $32.10 Liabilities:Loans:Mortgage Principal $-427,750.00 ; PV of mortgage at t=0 Assets:Current:XYZ Bank:Savings $-20,500.00 ; Down payment Assets:Current:AnAssetAccount $-5,001.37 ; More money down Assets:Current:Escrow $960.49 Expenses:House:Settlement $440.00 ; Origination charges Expenses:House:Settlement $325.00 ; Appraisal fee Expenses:House:Settlement $75.00 ; Tax service Expenses:House:Settlement $50.00 ; Appraisal management Expenses:House:Settlement $2,301.00 ; Title services and lender's title insurance Expenses:House:Settlement $105.00 ; Owner's title insurance Expenses:House:Settlement $220.00 ; Government recording charge Expenses:House:Settlement $300.00 ; Survey

This establishes the "Liabilities:Loans:Mortgage Principal" account which tracks the loan balance. "Assets:Fixed:House" can be used to calculate your equity (as in home equity, not an equity account type). Various charges need to be paid at closing time: title fees, current and next quarter taxes, utility services, etc. It also categorizes "Expenses:Interest:Mortgage Interest" as a separate category from other types of interest, for tax purposes. Finally, it also seeds the "Assets:Current:Escrow" account which is the source account for paying all sorts of property tax and insurance expenses.

A monthly mortgage payment might look like this:

2015-03-23=2015-04-01 (1000) Loan Servicing Company Liabilities:Loans:Mortgage Principal $585.63 Liabilities:Loans:Mortgage Principal $100.00 ; Pay a little extra principal every month Expenses:Interest:Mortgage Interest $909.08 Assets:Current:Escrow $1,024.48 Assets:Current:XYZ Bank:Checking $-2,619.19

This set up has tracked my mortgage payments and balances for several years, down to the penny.

hledger manual: toc: why are OUTPUT, PIVOTING not clickable ?

entry

entry command
a convenient non-interactive version of hledger add; and an extension point for data entry validations/automations

hledger entry [ONELINEENTRY]

ONELINEENTRY is a single argument, in quotes: a journal entry using double-space instead of newlines

hledger entry '2021-01-01 * (123) farmers market expenses:food $10 assets:checking ; date:1/3'

or with no argument, each line from standard input generates a journal entry
with -a|add, appends to the journal, like add/import
if entry does not begin with a date, uses today's date

hledger entry 'farmers market expenses:food $10 assets:cash'

if any other required parts are omitted, they are filled from similar past transactions, like add

These will match the txn above, and make the postings shown: hledger entry 'farmers' # expenses:food $10, assets:cash -$10 hledger entry 'farmers expenses:food $11' # expenses:food $11, assets:cash -$11 hledger entry 'farmers $11' # same hledger entry 'farmers 11' # same hledger entry 'farmers expenses:food 6 expenses:snacks 5' # expenses:food $6, expenses:snacks $5, assets:cash -$11

leaf names of known accounts will be expanded

hledger entry 'farmers food 6 snacks 5' # same

missing commodity symbol could also be inferred from source account's balance
or with a flag, missing required parts will give an error
complete, only, standalone, no-infer, no-past, no-journal
entry can run validation checks, including fancy ones like "asset accounts may not go negative"

ops

new hledger.org vps

pkg

need build-tools section in our package.yaml files to avoid build errors with happy etc. ?

process

refine RELEASING doc/process
automate changelog finalisation
automate release note generation

reports

reports: allow -c '0.%' to set style of -%
reports: relax the "whole subperiods" rule
when there's only one ?

bal -YH -e tomorrow would be titled with tomorrow's date instead of 12-31

when there's multiple, but no transactions before the begin date or after the end date ?

timeclock

timeclock: improve error message

hledger: clock-out time less than clock-in time in: 2021-09-17 * 12:00-06:00 (no-electronics) -6.00h

timeclock: ugly parse error

hledger: line 6: expected timeclock code o but got i CallStack (from HasCallStack): error, called at ./Hledger/Data/Timeclock.hs:85:32 in hledger-lib-1.22.99-HCWXy7WanhBI3o1AfvBpXy:Hledger.Data.Timeclock

timedot

timedot: more flexible parsing
ignore all preamble lines (before first date line)
ignore all amountless lines
ignore org list bullets/checkboxes
check timedotstrict: disables ignoring preamble/amountless lines
timedot: alias doesn't work with timeclock, timedot ?