gnucash/doc/sgml/C/xacc-whats-new.sgml

<article id="xacc-whats-new">
  <artheader>
    <title>
      What's New?
    </title>
  </artheader>
  <sect1>
    <title>
      What's new in GnuCash 1.6?
    </title>
    
    <para>
      Hello to all our existing GnuCash users!  A lot has changed since 1.4.x,
      and we believe that our new version is a major improvement on the old 
      version.  Virtually every aspect of the program has changed, and 
      lots of new capabilities have been added.
    </para>
    <sect2>
      <title>
	New File Format
      </title>
      <para>
	We have switched to an XML-based text file format.  GnuCash will read
	your existing 1.4 files without conversion.  However, 1.6 will
	always save your files in the new format.</para>
      <para>The new format is much, much more flexible than the old,
	and was required for all the other new features, as well as 
	many other features to be added in the future.  In addition,
	because it is based on XML, it makes it much easier for
	external tools to manipulate GnuCash files.
      </para>
      <para>
	We have tested the
	new format extensively, but, as always, it pays to keep a
	backup of your old data handy, just in case.
      </para>
      
      <para>
	As a small example of the improvements made possible by the
	new file format, GnuCash 1.4 uses "floating-point" numbers
	for its internal calculations, just like a calculator.
	Unfortunately, floating-point numbers are (rarely)
	susceptible to rounding errors.  Therefore, GnuCash has
	changed to fixed-point number representation stored to
	exactly the accuracy required.  Even some expensive
	proprietary "enterprise" accounting 
	packages do not support this vital feature.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    
    <sect2>
      <title>
	New Interface
      </title>
      <para>The interface has been massively revamped to make it 
	faster and easier to use.</para>
      <itemizedlist>
	<listitem><para>The register has been totally
	    revamped.  The confusing auto-balancing has been
	    reworked, the multi-line modes are much improved -
	    making it much easier to handle split transactions,
	    and you can now display a report of the transactions
	    in a register, making it easy to export or print them.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem><para>The QIF importer's interface is now much
	    simpler to use</para></listitem>
	<listitem><para>The main window has been totally revamped.
	    You now have the choice of displaying the account window
	    and one or more reports in a tabbed-notebook style view,
	    as multiple top-level windows, or all in the one
	    window.</para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem><para>
	    The help window is now fully indexed and searchable.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    The financial calculator, available from the "Tools"
	    menu, lets you calculate loan repayments and compound
	    interest easily.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </sect2>
    
    <sect2>
      <title>
	Reports
      </title>
      <para>The reporting architecture has changed radically for
	this release - and so reports are now more informative,
	flexible, and attractive than ever before.  Some of the
	improvements and new features include:
      </para>
      <itemizedlist>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    The new gtkhtml "widget" is used for report display.
	    The new display engine is faster, and produces 
	    better-looking output.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    Reports are now saved from session to session.  
	    To make this more useful, "rolling reports" with
	    date ranges specified using symbolic dates such 
	    as "today" or "beginning of this year" are now
	    available.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    <emphasis>Stylesheets</emphasis> control report
	    formatting, allowing you to customize the look
	    of your report.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    Reports now display useful information when 
	    multiple currencies are involved.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    Virtually every individual report has been 
	    radically improved, with nicer layout, 
	    closer correspondence with standard accounting
	    procedures, and radically improved flexibility
	    and configurability.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    Multiple reports can be packed together
	    into the one window for convenient display
	    of all the financial information you want,
	    using the multicolumn view, a special 
	    "container" report.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	      Last, but certainly not least, reports can now
	    be printed.  Yay!
	    </para>
	</listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </sect2>
    
    <sect2>
      <title>
	Graphs
      </title>
      
      <para>
	One of our most long-awaited features, GnuCash can now
	display your financial data in attractive bar, pie, and
	scatter plots.  This feature is provided through the
	use of the GUPPI plotting tool.
      </para>
      <para>
	We could talk about the graphs all day, but they're 
	  much more interesting to look at than talk about - 
	  for example:
	  </para>
	<screenshot>
	  <mediaobject>
	    <imageobject>
	      <imagedata fileref="image/asset-piechart.png">
	    </imageobject>
	  </mediaobject>
	</screenshot>
    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title>
	The Online World
      </title>
      
      <para>GnuCash can get price quotes online, with the 
	aid of Paul Fenwick's Finance::Quote module.  
	Finance::Quote continues to add more price sources, 
	allowing more international users to have more 
	convenient access to stock prices online.</para>
      <para>A major improvement of the new version is the
	ability to get price quotes from within the program 
	itself, without having to run a helper application.
	The ability to update price quotes from the command
	line remains, however.
      </para>
      <para>
	Mozilla not stable enough for you yet?  Don't like
	Galeon?  Don't have the libraries installed for 
	Konqueror?  Well, then, wait until you try GnuCash,
	the only web browser that also tracks your finances.
	Seriously, GnuCash can be used to display simple
	web pages using the "Frame URL" report - 
	handy for displaying web-based financial
	information, and particularly in combination with
	the multicolumn view.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    
    <sect2>
      <title>
	A taste of the Future
      </title>
      
      <para>GnuCash now supports using Postgres as a backend
	data store.  While perhaps not so important in a personal
	finance package, as GnuCash is extended to support 
	business accounting features database support will 
	be needed to handle massive datasets.</para>
      
      <para>The Postgres backend allows multiple simultaneous
        users to work on the same set of accounts at the same 
        time. When one user makes a change to a transaction,
        the change is sent to the Postgres database, and other
        users see the effect of that change within (10) seconds.
        The Postgres backend also maintains an audit trail
        of modified transactions, allowing you to see what changed,
        when. (Currently, there is no GUI to review the audit trail,
        one must be an SQL user to review the trail).  The
        Postgres backend also 'caches' data, so that a user
        only sees the data they are working with, without requiring
        that the entire contents of the database be loaded into  
        GnucCash.  This should make it possible to work with much 
        larger datasets.  The Postgres backend is currently 'beta',
        meaning tht it works, but hasn't been well-tested, and
        may contain bugs.
      </para>

      <para>Similarly, an RPC backend exists, which allows you
	to seperate the engine and interface and have them 
	running on totally seperate machines.  Developments
	using this facility to build independent, specific-function
	clients have already commenced.
      </para>
      
      <para>Budgeting and scheduled transactions are perhaps 
	GnuCash's most requested features.  Unfortunately,
	they didn't make it this time around, but developers
	are already working hard towards adding this support,
	to go into the main development verison soon after the
	1.6 release, for inclusion in the next stable version
	(which will probably be 2.0).
      </para>
      
      <para>Similarly, more sophisticated automatic handling 
	of dividend and brokerages for stock tracking began,
	but didn't make the feature cut this time around.
	Expect this to be sorted out in the next major release.
      </para>
      
      <para>This is just a taste of what's coming in the future.
	However, with GnuCash, <emphasis>you</emphasis> are in 
	a position to get what you want.  The GnuCash developers
	are easy to contact (see the webpage for more details),
	and love to hear how GnuCash can be improved.  If you are
	a programmer, consider contributing to GnuCash development
	and helping to turn GnuCash into the program that you want
	it to be.
      </para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>
</article>
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