From b0cab1386c0b62e3e55f8e10ca97ad4960e9ce03 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Simon Michael Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2016 19:53:22 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] small text cleanups --- index.html | 4 ++-- index.md | 4 ++-- 2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/index.html b/index.html index a9c6ff8..d6d31bd 100644 --- a/index.html +++ b/index.html @@ -108,7 +108,7 @@ Plain Text Accounting
-

Frequently Asked Questions

+

frequently asked questions

Who is this for ?
Mostly techies and power users for now. If you need a complete GUI providing lots of guidance, you may prefer to use something else.

Must I edit text and type cryptic commands ?
@@ -145,7 +145,7 @@ Accounting is modelling flows of money (or other value). Such a model aggregates Understandable. The current plain text accounting tools provide a very generic double entry accounting system with which you can model such things, and script them. There are a number of generic GUIs available (hledger has curses and web interfaces, and there are web/curses/GTK interfaces for Ledger and beancount). But there are not yet a lot of rich task-specific GUIs. There's no reason they can't be built, though.

Isn't a plain text format too limited for large organizations ?
"it's pretty obvious that plain-text files don't scale to a multinational, with hundreds of accountants of various types all trying to work with the same files. Even with proper use of Git I bet that would get old fast. You would instead want a real database, with a schema, and some data validation and some programs/webpages to smooth out the data entry and querying and whatnot."
-I'm not sure. Current plain text accounting tools can do some schema definition and data validation, and will do more in future. The plain text storage format is open, human-readable, future-proof (useful even without the software), scales smoothly from simple to complex needs, and taps a huge ecosystem of highly useful tooling, such as version control systems. And, despite the name, there's no reason these tools can't support other kinds of storage, such as a database. (hledger has four storage formats and is designed to accept more).

+I'm not sure. Current plain text accounting tools can do some schema definition and data validation, and will do more in future. The plain text storage format is open, human-readable, future-proof (useful even without the software), scales smoothly from simple to complex needs, and taps a huge ecosystem of highly useful tooling, such as version control systems. And, despite the name, there's no reason these tools can't support other kinds of storage, such as a database.

Where can I see a comparison of hledger, Ledger, beancount, and the rest ?
Glad you asked! See below, and also comparisons. hledger's FAQ discusses differences from Ledger, Beancount docs probably do too.

diff --git a/index.md b/index.md index 2e8192f..510ff2d 100644 --- a/index.md +++ b/index.md @@ -127,7 +127,7 @@ This simple model makes them easy to understand and rely on.
-### Frequently Asked Questions +### frequently asked questions **Who is this for ?**\ Mostly techies and power users for now. @@ -206,7 +206,7 @@ There are a number of generic GUIs available (hledger has curses and web interfa **Isn't a plain text format too limited for large organizations ?**\ *"it's pretty obvious that plain-text files don't scale to a multinational, with hundreds of accountants of various types all trying to work with the same files. Even with proper use of Git I bet that would get old fast. You would instead want a real database, with a schema, and some data validation and some programs/webpages to smooth out the data entry and querying and whatnot."*\ -I'm not sure. Current plain text accounting tools can do some schema definition and data validation, and will do more in future. The plain text storage format is open, human-readable, future-proof (useful even without the software), scales smoothly from simple to complex needs, and taps a huge ecosystem of highly useful tooling, such as version control systems. And, despite the name, there's no reason these tools can't support other kinds of storage, such as a database. (hledger has four storage formats and is designed to accept more). +I'm not sure. Current plain text accounting tools can do some schema definition and data validation, and will do more in future. The plain text storage format is open, human-readable, future-proof (useful even without the software), scales smoothly from simple to complex needs, and taps a huge ecosystem of highly useful tooling, such as version control systems. And, despite the name, there's no reason these tools can't support other kinds of storage, such as a database. **Where can I see a comparison of hledger, Ledger, beancount, and the rest ?**\ Glad you asked! See below, and also [comparisons](#comparisons). hledger's FAQ discusses differences from Ledger, Beancount docs probably do too.