Preferences and book options
GnuCash's Edit > Preferences become Configuration settings read with config.get and changed with config.set; File > Properties (Book Options) become book.options and book.setOptions, with counters in counter.list and counter.set. Preferences about windows, registers and printing have no counterpart.
GnuCash keeps two kinds of settings. Preferences belong to the person and live in GSettings (dconf, the registry or a plist). Book options belong to the book and live in the file. red-ale keeps the same split: the Configuration is a file of the person's settings, and the book options stay in the book, where GnuCash reads them. See Configuration.
Edit > Preferences
config.schema lists every setting with its type and default, config.get
reads one or all, and config.set changes several at once, all or none. They work with no book open.
| GnuCash tab | red-ale |
|---|---|
| Accounting Period | accountingPeriod.start, .end and .fiscalYearEnd. period.get, period.set and period.dates read, change and work out the dates (Closing the books and the accounting period). |
| Accounts | Not provided. Colours, columns and the Account tree's filter are display. excludeHidden is a parameter of account.list and account.tree |
| Business | The invoice and bill defaults are book options (below). Reminder days and the like are not provided |
| General | Not provided: red-ale does not autosave, warn before saving or show a Tip of the Day. The date and number conventions are under Numbers, Date, Time |
| Import | import.settings.* for the matcher's thresholds, import.csvLayouts.* for saved CSV layouts and import.qifAccountMap for QIF (Importing and matching) |
| Numbers, Date, Time | locale for the number, date and currency conventions (C by default, or a POSIX name such as fr_FR), defaultCurrency, and reports.dateFormat for reports |
| Online Banking | Not supported (Not in red-ale) |
| Online Quotes | quotes.network (off by default), quotes.services.* and quotes.sources.* (Prices and exchange rates) |
| Printing | Not provided: export the HTML of a report and print it from a browser |
| Register, Register Defaults | Not provided: there is no register |
| Reports | reports.directory (your own scripts), reports.currency, reports.weekStart, reports.reverseBalancedAccounts and reports.limits.* (Reports) |
| Scheduled Transactions | Not provided. red-ale never runs scheduled transactions on its own; you ask with scheduledTransaction.sinceLastRun and then .apply (Tools) |
| Windows | Not provided |
Document links have one setting, docLinks.pathHead, which docLink.pathHead reads and
docLink.setPathHead changes: it is the folder that relative links start from. It is in
the Configuration, never in the book.
red-ale has no GSettings. A setting you leave alone has its default. A key in the Configuration file that red-ale does
not know is kept and listed in unknown.
File > Properties (Book Options)
book.options reads the options in the book and book.setOptions
changes them. An option you leave out is left alone.
| GnuCash tab | red-ale |
|---|---|
| Accounts: Use Trading Accounts | useTradingAccounts (Trading accounts) |
| Accounts: Day Threshold for Read-Only Transactions | autoReadOnlyDays; 0 turns it off (Read-only books) |
| Accounts: Use Split Action Field for Number | splitActionForNum. Turning it on adds the Book feature Number Field Source (Books and files) |
| Budgeting: Default Budget | defaultBudget (Budgets) |
| Business: company name, address, contact, phone, fax, email, website, company ID, tax number | companyName, companyAddress, companyContactPerson, companyPhoneNumber, companyFaxNumber, companyEmailAddress, companyWebsiteUrl, companyId, taxNumber |
| Business: Default Invoice Report (and the layout, title and footer of invoices) | defaultInvoiceReport (Business) |
| Counters | counter.list, counter.set. ⚠ The counter is the last number issued; the next document gets one more |
Options that red-ale does not know are kept in the book as they are, and written back unchanged.