[moneydance] "show other side" vs splits and loans

[Edward Reid]

At 15:31 05/07/06 -0400, Ken Ganshirt wrote:
>In fairness, Quicken/Win does not do splits inline. There is a "Splits"
>button on the line with any transaction that has a split. Click the
>"Splits" button and it pops a seperate "Splits Transaction Window" - a
>sort of mini-register window that is properly tailored to doing splits
>about as easily as it gets.

Well, having now edited a few more split transactions, I have to say that 
if Q/Win does it like MD, then they are both pretty awkward.

On Q/Mac, the splits appear inline underneath the main transaction. It's 
still the "mini-register" sort of thing but it's not a separate window, so 
you can still tab between fields in the main transaction and the splits 
part. When entering a new transaction, hitting cmd-E opens the splits. When 
you select an existing transaction which has splits, the splits open 
automatically.

It's not perfect. When quickfill matches an old transaction with splits, 
the split section doesn't open automatically, you still have to hit cmd-E. 
This can be good or bad; neither way would always be ideal. And it picks up 
the split values from the previous transaction -- and keeps the same 
amounts even when you've entered a different amount in the total. (As 
discussed many times here before, in Q the total transaction amount and the 
splits total are distinct; in essence you get the opportunity to balance 
the mini-register before recording the transaction.) This usually means you 
need to clear all the split amounts. In practice, for payees with frequent 
splits (Walgreens comes to mind, used to be Wal-Mart before I moved into 
town and they are too far out in the burbs to bother with), in Q I ended up 
editing the quickfill list to put zero amounts on all the splits and then 
locking the quickfill txn.

And when you are moving through a register with return or page up/down or 
arrow up/down, the automatic opening of the splits tends to make the 
register jump around. Again, it's both a good thing and a bad thing.

But getting back to MD, what I find bothering me is the difficulty of 
getting in and out of the splits. I find myself expecting that just 
clicking on a transaction will show more information than it does. And once 
the split is open, I cannot for example edit the date or payee until I 
close the split window. (Which is another problem, but I'm trying to 
separate the concept from the keyboard navigation -- I think we all agree 
that keyboard navigation of the split window could be greatly improved 
within the current mechanism.) The finger problem is less, though, than the 
eye problem -- the splits window opens in the same place every time, with 
the result that it's often far from the transaction.

So those are the parts of the Q/Mac splits interface that seem to be 
important to me: getting in and out of the splits quickly and easily, and 
minimum eye movement to see the spits info.

Edward
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org