anusha k wrote:

hi, GNUKhata is an upcoming project(actually soon to be released anytime after 5th June).The project is a complete free software to the likes of tally,accpack etc.The project was being developed on an voluntary basis and after the code base was developed NIXI (National Internet exchange of India ) funded it for dedicated development. The result of this funding has been that GNUKhata is in its alpha stage and can be used excluding two important modules balance sheet and profit & loss account which will be developed in the coming couple of weeks.you can visit http://gnukhata.gnulinux.in for further details.

Note that modules such as ledger,trial balance and inventory system is completely functional

Finally the cat is out of the bag. :-)

On Monday 18 May 2009 18:14:14 anusha k wrote:

GNUKhata is an upcoming project(actually soon to be released anytime after 5th June).The project is a complete free software to the likes of tally,accpack etc.The project was being developed on an voluntary basis and after the code base was developed NIXI (National Internet exchange of India ) funded it for dedicated development. The  result of this funding has been that GNUKhata is in its alpha stage and can be used excluding two important modules balance sheet and profit & loss account which will be developed in the coming couple of weeks.you can visit http://gnukhata.gnulinux.in for further details.

I could not check out the software:

[lawgon@xlquest ~]$ svn co http://gnulinux.in/svn/trunk/gnukhata gnukhata svn: Repository moved temporarily to 'http://gnulinux.in/article/learning- subversionsvn'; please relocate [lawgon@xlquest ~]$ svn co http://gnulinux.in/article/learning- subversionsvn/trunk/gnukhata gnukhata svn: XML data was not well-formed [lawgon@xlquest ~]$ svn co http://gnulinux.in/article/learning- subversionsvn/gnukhata1 gnukhata svn: XML data was not well-formed

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 13:06:12 anusha k wrote:

...

I could not check out the software:

Please read the install instructions present on the first page of the wiki to download gnukhata_alpha

ok - done. I actually wanted to checkout trunk though

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 1:25 PM, Krishnakant krmane@gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 13:06 +0530, anusha k wrote:

...

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.orgwrote:

...

I could not check out the software:

Please read the install instructions present on the first page of the wiki to download gnukhata_alpha

Hello every one, This is Krishnakant from the GNUKhata team.  Due I happen to be the project leader for GK. GNUkhata is ment to be a scalable software and can suit the needs of absolutely non-technical people who  don't have lot of time and knowledge to get things working like the way yu would need with softwares like GNUCash.  Secondly although we want this to be an international software, it is more suited to Indian needs right now because there is an urgent need to free people from the proprietory evils of the likes of tally an the rest.

As the Project chief, I welcome you all to try it out.  Right now though, while almost all features and modules are production ready, there are no deb and rpm packages for the software.  Thus you will have to follow the instructions on the web site as suggested by our coordinater anusha. Checkout with svn co http://gnukhata.gnulinux.in/svn/gnukhata_alpha and follow the instructions in the INSTALL file found in the root folder.

You will also need to install python-psycopg2, python-twisted and the rest of the requirements mentioned in that file.

For the interested people, the software is licensed Under GPL v3 by Comet Media Foundation which has been involved with the project since more than a year and has helped in its growth before NIXI provided the all important funding.

We will soon provide detailed documentation. We however need one very important help from all you gnu/linux supporters now.  We wish to create deb and rpm packages and need some one to help us out so that people can install the software with one click.

This sounds interesting even... i've been looking for a package that needs a packager, for some packaging experience. I Can look at building and maintaining RPM Packages, primarily for fedora/redhat platforms. Let me try out the system from svn and see how it goes. Do contact me off-list to co-ordinate how we go about it even...

Regards R. K. Rajeev

Do keep posting about the feedbacks or ask on about any feature.  We have the mailing list at gnu-khata@googlegroups.com right now.

happy hacking. Krishnakant.

-- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers

Hi Kenneth, Good observation and thanks for your feedback.

Any ways what we would do is to let user decide the password.

Right now it is a desktop app and in the near future, we are going to start a web based system where this flaw will become even more important. Never the less what you have suggested is already on our minds and infact we deployed it in an organisation and changed the passwords ourselves. So you are right in that the security can't be left like this.

Thanks again. Krishnakant.

On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 14:12 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 13:25:36 Krishnakant wrote:

...

Do keep posting about the feedbacks or ask on about any feature. We have the mailing list at gnu-khata@googlegroups.com right now.

first feedback: The INSTALL document states:

<quote> to use postgresql for the first time there is a dedicated administrator account called postgres. This will be the user we will use for the database. We must set a password for that user. to change/ reset the password, sudo passwd postgres for ubuntu or just su passwd postgres for any other sudo less distro of gnu/linux and hit enter. enter the password ''gkadmin'' and re-type for confirmation. <endquote>

this is a serious security flaw as it means that every computer running gnu- khata will have 'gkadmin' as password for postgres - which is a super user. That means that anyone at all can log in as postgres and mess up all the databases on the system. A separate user should be created that only has rights over the gnu-khata database, and choice of password should be given to the end user. Conventionally this is done by having a separate settings.py file where sensitive information like this is entered and read by the application. In this way password can also be regularly changed.

-- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/

Kenneth, May I request you to *please* send this feedback to the gnu-khata mailing list? 1, this mailing list is for gnu/linux users and at some point of time people might not be interested to get into this thread which is valuable for me and my team. 2, most of our developers are on the gnu=khata mailing list so they will bennifit out of your feedback.

happy hacking. Krishnakant.

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 11:13 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 14:22:18 Krishnakant wrote:

...

Good observation and thanks for your feedback.

feedback no 2:

1. you have 3 tables - organisation, vendor and customer. A lot of the address

information is the same. This may be abstracted out into a separate table.

2. if city is made a foreign key to a city table, state and country

information is redundant

3. "Product table which can maintain fields for all possible product types". It

is not possible to list all possible product types, and should not be hard coded anyway as you are just wasting database space. Since most of the fields here are text or integer, you should have a flexible template type table where these values can be named and entered. Most users will only require a few of these anyway.

there is lots more - when I have time ...

-- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 14:22:18 Krishnakant wrote:

Good observation and thanks for your feedback.

I have a question regarding your development model. Normally in an open source product, development is carried out in trunk, releases are frozen in tags and major sidelines are done in branches. Trunk is always available for anonymous checkout for those who wish to test/use the app and contribute too.

In this case there appears to be a veil of secrecy around the project. Rony kept hinting about it, but no information seemed to be readily available. Even now I am unable to checkout the trunk. This is very much against the philosophy of commit early and commit often. For example, the database password issue - the patch is still not available in the svn even though it is 24 hours since the issue was raised.

Since it is GPLed, I may not be able to contribute code, but being a person who has worked at getting a good FA package for linux for India for the past 10 years, I feel I can help a lot by giving feedback, testing and suggesting. As of now, I cannot even install the application because it would mean exposing my db superuser password - my machine is connected to the internet.

On Wednesday 20 May 2009 12:56:23 Krishnakant wrote:

I did not understand the relation between software being GPL and you not able to help. That sounded like "can't help a project since it is protecting freedom of every one". May be I am wrong but I need clearification, just out of curiosity.

I am a very lazy person and rarely write any code from scratch. Usually copy- paste-modify code that I (or someone else) has already written. So putting code in a GPL'ed app could lead to a lot of unnecessary licensing concerns as all my work is under BSD license - and the code I copy-paste is also usually under the same license.

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 15:02:19 Mrugesh Karnik wrote:

As it is, for a desktop app, it doesn't make sense to tell user to go configure a postgresql or even mysql database. Why not just use sqlite or mysql embedded instead?

Requirement of postgresql for a desktop app is just plain dumb, even for a fan such as myself.

ever heard of ACID? Non use of postgresql for a mission critical financial app is plain dumb.

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 15:53:48 Dinesh Shah (દિનેશ શાહ/दिनेश शाह) wrote:

...

ever heard of ACID? Non use of postgresql for a mission critical financial app is plain dumb.

http://www.sqlite.org/features.html

SQLite is ACID compliant and more appropriate for Desktop Applications.

BS - sheer BS. Even the sqlite people would not recommend it for a financial database. Check out recommended uses of sqlite and also omitted SQL features. Or you want the programmer to write zillions of lines of code to enforce foreign key constraints? And btw, this is not a desktop application - it is a server.

Or you want the programmer to write zillions of lines of code to enforce foreign key constraints?

Foreign key constraints can be easily achieved with sqlite using triggers. I have personally implemented 3 desktop projects using sqlite + Qt and in all cases I have used triggers to enforce foreign key constraints. And you won't need zillions of lines of code. Only a few triggers for each constraint. And even that can be automated. In fact, there already is a web script which automatically generates triggers to implement foreign key constraints by parsing the original "CREATE TABLE" statement. Sqlite allows you to mention foreign key constraints in your "create table" statement even though it does not currently implement it.

Using sqlite is actually a boon for creating applications for desktop use. The only shortcoming of sqlite is no support for procedures. But that can be overcome by using relevant functions within the app. In short, I feel that sqlite does a very good job. And it is very fast.

And btw, this is not a desktop application - it is a

server.

Technically, yes. But in usage the aim appears to create a desktop application for accounting purpose. In any case, sqlite supports multiple access to its data, and even has transaction support.

http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html#q5

I am not sure about the recent versions of Tally, but previous versions (I guess upto 5.4 or maybe even 6.3) of Tally used its own internal system to manage data. It did not use third party databases to store data. This, in my view, is the correct approach for desktop applications.

If you talk about scalability and enterprise level things then probably, one would need other dbms, but I personally feel that if we want users attracted to GNU/Linux then one should concentrate on creating desktop applications which simply run as is on single machines. Creating client server applications make sense in very big organisations having large number of concurrent users. Otherwise, for a desktop application, making the user install and configure other applications just to run this one application is a guranteed way of putting off the user.

Rajen.

On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 17:56 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

there is one fundamental principle one follows in criticising/commenting on open source applications:

the developer gets to choose his platform and his tools. It is counter productive to give long arguments about his choice. He is not going to change especially after putting in a hell of a lot of hard work. Criticise the application - tear it to pieces, but respect his choice of the colour he uses to paint his bike shed.

"especially putting in a hell lot of efords ", One must also realise that if "hell lot of efords are put in " this probably means that the developer or developers have some insight into the product they are using. So perhaps there is a way to overcome the so called *weekness* of a particular system and the developers already know it, given the fact they have used it for more than a year.

happy hacking. Krishnakant.

-- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/

On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 18:27 +0530, Mrugesh Karnik wrote:

Yeah and the problem with that assumption is that the developers also have the knowledge of administration. They don't, but they assume that they do.

Sorry, I Don't remember any developer from the team claiming that "they do "? Infact I think any matured developer knows this as a matter of fact that admins are admins. But some so called developers asume that admins are going to be computer newbees and no technical knowledge.

I think the mail is not clear on what the reader actually understands about development and deployment.

IMHO, developers are over rated. Just because you've put in a great deal of effort into something doesn't mean its correct. That way, I'm sure the teams that get relegated put in a lot of efforts, possibly even more than the Champions. Just because you've put efforts into it does not mean it doesn't suck.

hehe, I am happy that some one used our system on terra bites of data and has come to a conclusion that it "sucks ". Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks Dinesh, Thanks every one. All your points are valid and at any given point of time, there is some tuning work to be done, security flaws to be removed and much more than that.

Administration is a job to be done on-site and if a single user is going to use it on a desktop then I don't know what more would he need than automated installation and configuration?

I want to ask one question to all readers, Will the end-user ever care if we have postgresql or mysql at the back-end unless he is a programmer or a techno person? Postgresql is known to scale up, it has lot of enterprise-ready features and lot of work-arounds which programmers "do know " for what ever weeknesses are there.

Another aspect to this is that once the software goes through a couple or more deployments and gains some benchmarking, we can always change the back-end to what ever we can find.

Even now the system is loosly coupled with the logic and even more loosely coupled with the front end. So changing it is not difficult.

happy hacking. Krishnakant.

Krishnakant wrote:

Administration is a job to be done on-site and if a single user is going to use it on a desktop then I don't know what more would he need than automated installation and configuration?

Lets not make the same mistake Microsoft made when it did not offer networking support in its initial operating systems and Billy even made a statement about this. Later on they were forced to add networking support for a multi-user environment. Please note that T___y is already being used in multi-user setups even in ordinary shops and small offices. Nowadays there is more than one computer in various offices and there are more than one employees making entries. Security is essential to ensure that the employee who uses Gnukhata does not screw it up when he is switching over to a new job. Plus in Windows he should be able to run this software as an unprivileged user. The first migration to Gnukhata will take place in windows for T___y users. Once they get familiar, they will migrate to Linux.

I want to ask one question to all readers, Will the end-user ever care if we have postgresql or mysql at the back-end unless he is a programmer or a techno person?

The objections were raised by a programmer cum hacker and his opinion does carry weight if it helps improvise and simplify the target software.

Krishnakant wrote:

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 22:43 +0530, Rony wrote:

...

Lets not make the same mistake Microsoft made when it did not offer networking support in its initial operating systems and Billy even made a statement about this. Later on they were forced to add networking support for a multi-user environment. Please note that T___y is already being used in multi-user setups even in ordinary shops and small offices. Nowadays there is more than one computer in various offices and there are more than one employees making entries. Security is essential to ensure that the employee who uses Gnukhata does not screw it up when he is switching over to a new job. Plus in Windows he should be able to run this software as an unprivileged user. The first migration to Gnukhata will take place in windows for T___y users. Once they get familiar, they will migrate to Linux.

I don't know who from the gnukhata team claimed that we don't have networking and multi user support? Infact this is the main reason Comet Media Foundation is using GNUKhata. I think making the mistake microsoft made is a stupidity and only unprofessional immatured programmers would *probably* do it.

Well it was Krishnakant who said "Administration is a job to be done on-site and if a single user is going to use it on a desktop then I don't know what more would he need than automated installation and configuration? "

If you have multi-user and networking support in the software by default then it is very nice.

Kenneth,

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 5:56 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org wrote:

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 17:38:38 Rajen M. Parekh wrote:

...

...

Or you want the programmer to write zillions of lines of code to enforce foreign key constraints?

Foreign key constraints can be easily achieved with sqlite using triggers. I have personally implemented 3 desktop projects using sqlite + Qt and in all cases I have used triggers to enforce foreign key constraints. And you won't need zillions of lines of code. Only a few triggers for each constraint. And even that can be automated. In fact, there already is a web script which automatically generates triggers to implement foreign key constraints by parsing the original "CREATE TABLE" statement. Sqlite allows you to mention foreign key constraints in your "create table" statement even though it does not currently implement it.

there is one fundamental principle one follows in criticising/commenting on open source applications:

No one, so far, has questioned/criticized the developers' right to use/choose whichever tools he/she/they can use.

the developer gets to choose his platform and his tools. It is counter productive to give long arguments about his choice. He is not going to change especially after putting in a hell of a lot of hard work. Criticise the application - tear it to pieces, but respect his choice of the colour he uses to paint his bike shed.

The whole debate started about the appropriateness of selecting certain DB in desktop class app based on your "security hole" related post and subsequently removing possible/perceived deployment difficulty in a desktop application.

Even original developer(s) have taken the feedback in right spirit and explained his/their position in the selection process of the back-end DB.

This debate could be useful to FOSS developers in future to select right tools for solving a problem.

-- regards Kenneth Gonsalves

Let us keep the debate healthy without any personal acrimony. With regards,

there is one fundamental principle one follows in criticising/commenting on open source applications:

the developer gets to choose his platform and his tools. It is counter productive to give long arguments about his choice. He is not going to change especially after putting in a hell of a lot of hard work. Criticise the application - tear it to pieces, but respect his choice of the colour he uses to paint his bike shed.

I did not criticize the original developers choice of db. I commented on your views regarding sqlite. Neither does my reply imply in any way to forego the efforts already put in by Mr. Mane and his team in favour of sqlite. I only mentioned the advantages of sqlite in the same spirit as you displayed for postgresql.

If giving out correct information is what you object to, then this discussion is useless.

Rajen.

On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 18:52 +0530, Nagarjuna G. wrote:

Let us first have a free accounting app that works in one of the DBs. After it reaches some meturity, we can explore to develop a middleware to make it DB independent.

Exactly, My point!

It will be more useful if some of you could actually take the trouble of installing and give feadback on usability.

And please all of you keep posting. I don't think that Rajan or any one really ment to critisize the point. The frustrations start when there are harsh comments and words like "it sucks " which are made out of improper knowledge and programming practice.

As nagarjun rightly suggested, Please try running the software, infact upto ledger it is production ready. Then after putting large volume of data if it "sucks " please provide details on your bench marks. It is perfectly ok and infact necessary for such feedbacks to come. happy hacking. Krishnakant.

On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 17:38 +0530, Rajen M. Parekh wrote:

Foreign key constraints can be easily achieved with sqlite using triggers. I have personally implemented 3 desktop projects using sqlite + Qt and in all cases I have used triggers to enforce foreign key constraints. And you won't need zillions of lines of code. Only a few triggers for each constraint. And even that can be automated. In fact, there already is a web script which automatically generates triggers to implement foreign key constraints by parsing the original "CREATE TABLE" statement. Sqlite allows you to mention foreign key constraints in your "create table" statement even though it does not currently implement it.

Thanks for the update. It is just that some one would need to make this happen. We want the system to be enterprise ready and some database which can handle tuns of records and do indexing in an efficient way is needed.

Using sqlite is actually a boon for creating applications for desktop use. The only shortcoming of sqlite is no support for procedures. But that can be overcome by using relevant functions within the app. In short, I feel that sqlite does a very good job. And it is very fast.

It is not the question of stored procedures (although it means a hel lot of performance boost when stored procedures are used), but the scalability is the question here.

And btw, this is not a desktop application - it is a

...

server.

Technically, yes. But in usage the aim appears to create a desktop application for accounting purpose. In any case, sqlite supports multiple access to its data, and even has transaction support.

Technically the aim *is* an application which *can* run on a desktop with minimum user intervention in setting up the system.

http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html#q5

I am not sure about the recent versions of Tally, but previous versions (I guess upto 5.4 or maybe even 6.3) of Tally used its own internal system to manage data. It did not use third party databases to store data. This, in my view, is the correct approach for desktop applications.

But this also prevents standardised data storage and retrival methods. Any ways that was the main aim of tally and is the case with all proprietory softwares, to create the "vendor lock-in ". So it is a highly undesirable method to store the data in some kind of standard which only we as core GK developres understand. And even if we publish the specs, I don't find any reason to create a new "GNUKhata Query Language " or some thing similar and add to the list of already available data languages.

As the lead developer I conciously took this decision so that I can answer "it is just the matter of doing this " when people as "can I prot this to mysql or ... db server?".

I hope the point is clear, else don't hesitate to ask back.

happy hacking. Krishnakant.

If you talk about scalability and enterprise level things then probably, one would need other dbms, but I personally feel that if we want users attracted to GNU/Linux then one should concentrate on creating desktop applications which simply run as is on single machines. Creating client server applications make sense in very big organisations having large number of concurrent users. Otherwise, for a desktop application, making the user install and configure other applications just to run this one application is a guranteed way of putting off the user.

Rajen.

Hi Mehul. Thanks a lot dude for reporting this.

By the way GNUKhata is not ment for home users actually, although we will make a painless setup process once the deb and rpm packages are ready. So home users should find it easy too. However our priority *is* business use including but not limited to commertial enterprises with large to medium volume of data and small non-commertial setups like NGOs etc who don't have a huge network but have a good dea of data to handle and do generate a lot of vouchers etc. So your point of "why we are worried of installation ..." is valid and I have mentioned that point in my previous emails too. You have got the point right in that context. The enterprise = deployment and deployment = smart personels to instal software. responses to your numberd points follow. On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 23:54 +0530, Mehul Ved wrote:

1. Who's the intended audience of gnukhata? Is it the businesses or home users?

If it is business then why are we so worried about there being incompetent people to install and manage the application. If it is then they have another bigger problem to solve before they worry about what accounting package to use. If it is the home user, then why are we so worried of scalability at this point as compared to features? No home user is going to generate huge data, they will care about features.

Read my comments above this list of points, That was an important aspect so I have answered it before any thing.

2. The wiki mentions of #gnukhata channel on irc.freenode.net, I don't

see anybody on that channel, nor is it even registered. Is it the right channel?

It is the right channel, although for the last week or so, we have not hanged out much over there due to out deadlines on GNUKhata. The good thing is that GNUKhata right now has helthy funding and people are strict on their deadlines. the down side is that developers on the team (except yours truely and anusha ) are not really going out to the public.

3. There are a couple of typos in the documentation. Whom do I report it to?

GNUKhata Mailing list gnu-khata@googlegroups.com which will soon shift to the main server. Right now though, you can join this mailing list and report any thing there. People are very responsive on that mailing list.

4. While installing, even when the installation is failing I see the

following line "Tables and default data are added"

Yes, because the installation script was not written for the real production use. We are taken the decision that we will finally put eveyr thing in the deb package and so right now I am personally re-writing those scripts. The sript will be updated to the svn repo in a day or two.

5. Installation seems to go fine but I am ending up with following

error when starting the client application. I have python 2.5.2 -----xxxxx----- : No such file or directory ./main.py: line 28: syntax error near unexpected token `'2.0'' ./main.py: line 28: `pygtk.require('2.0')' -----xxxxx----- But, typing the same in python interpreter seems to return no error -----xxxxx----- python Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Jun 26 2008, 19:45:40) [GCC 4.2.3 (Gentoo 4.2.3 p1.0)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

...

...

...

import pygtk pygtk.require('2.0')

-----xxxxx-----

Thanks a million for this report. We will have the bug tracking system up by tomorrow evening as per the commitment of our server admin in Banglore. Thanks to the deeproot team, we have so far got very good server and it is generaly up in most cases.

Will report on more once I get started with actual application.

Please do. I would request you to join the mailing list and report bugs there. And you are also welcome to visit our offfice to get some personal insight and a live demo.

happy hacking. Krishnakant.

--

Dyslexics have more fnu. - http://kingsly.net/tmp/fortune.php/1242364116

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 03:28 +0530, Sanjay B wrote:

(sorry for top posting)

works fine for me on ubuntu 9.04 . Just the Cancel button on some pop-ups doesn't seem to work - minor issue.

Hehe, thanks. It seams you are pritty well with the hardships one has to take when testing a software without a user-friendly installation utility. I know it might have been a bit tough to follow the INSTALL instructions, but we have tryed our level best to make it as simple as possible.

A bit curious as to what formats this exports to, as well as curious about the nature of the server / client architecture . Is the 'api' documented somewhere? A web-app interface to this seems like a natural next-step, would be cool. The vouchers, including sales and purchase bills and user-defined vouchers all are created in pdf and so are easy to email and print it from a machine where the software is not running.

The ledgers and tryal balance comes in ods format (spreadsheets being read-only ). You are right we have almost come on the verge of starting the web app based client.

Actually our approach is a thin client and all that the client will do is to make calls o the published API on the xmlrpc server layer which has to core logic. So we are following the Pure MVC structure. As a result the core of GNUKhata is nothing but a service which provides the core API which can be used from any programming language which can do rpc (and almost every language does). So writing a QT based client, or a web application that renders the forms and the data is easy because all that you do is make calls to the server side API which has the core logic ready made for you.

But overall the interface seems clean and usable, going to run it by our accountant and see if I can convince him to switch from Tally, but am guessing its not so simple. ( is there any ideas about data imports from tally .. ? )

We can import csv and so perhaps tally data can be imported?

Good job though, congratulations, and hope you can release soon.

Keep thanks a lot. Keep posting. By the way your feedback positive or negative will be very valuable for us. why don't you join our mailing list at gnu-khata@googlegroups.com

happy hacking. Krishnakant.

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 14:45 +0530, Sanjay B wrote:

Was far easier than a lot of other stuff I've been trying to install over the past week, heh;) - just a couple typos which may confuse someone - you say do 'sudo postgres' in ubuntu to su into postgres user when of course that should be 'sudo su postgres', and on the last line you say run main.py to start the client - that should probably be updated to say run start.py (although the directory structure makes that pretty evident). Thanks will update that.

...

...

A bit curious as to what formats this exports to, as well as curious about the nature of the server / client architecture . Is the 'api' documented somewhere? A web-app interface to this seems like a natural next-step, would be cool. The vouchers, including sales and purchase bills and user-defined vouchers all are created in pdf and so are easy to email and print it from a machine where the software is not running.

The ledgers and tryal balance comes in ods format (spreadsheets being read-only ). You are right we have almost come on the verge of starting the web app based client.

Actually our approach is a thin client and all that the client will do is to make calls o the published API on the xmlrpc server layer which has to core logic. So we are following the Pure MVC structure. As a result the core of GNUKhata is nothing but a service which provides the core API which can be used from any programming language which can do rpc (and almost every language does). So writing a QT based client, or a web application that renders the forms and the data is easy because all that you do is make calls to the server side API which has the core logic ready made for you.

Sounds great - was just curious if it's possible to access documentation for this API / if that will be available soon ?

Actually I am already working on the API along with Anusha, the project coordinator. Infact kenneth's request for the password patch is also being worked upon although we have been after the hackers to sort out the "miner " bugs which you and others pointed about the UI. Will update the wiki on gnukhata.gnulinux.in soon with both the user manual and the API docs.

...

...

But overall the interface seems clean and usable, going to run it by our accountant and see if I can convince him to switch from Tally, but am guessing its not so simple. ( is there any ideas about data imports from tally .. ? )

We can import csv and so perhaps tally data can be imported?

...

Good job though, congratulations, and hope you can release soon.

Keep thanks a lot. Keep posting. By the way your feedback positive or negative will be very valuable for us. why don't you join our mailing list at gnu-khata@googlegroups.com

Doing that - probably too many mails on this on this list already ;-)

happy hacking:), Sanjay

Thanks for understand, else along with me many people will be flamed for fludding this list with emails which ar supposed to be on some other mailing list :)

happy hacking. Krishnakant.

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 2:19 PM, Krishnakant krmane@gmail.com wrote:

By the way your feedback positive or negative will be very valuable for us.  why don't you join our mailing list at gnu-khata@googlegroups.com

Shouldn't you be pointing people to http://groups.google.com/group/gnu-khata ? I am updating this link on the wiki instead of the broken email address that has been put up currently so people find it easier to subscribe to the list. Also, consider registering the IRC channel.

On Wednesday 20 May 2009 11:41:36 scrapo wrote:

Krishnakant, I will come over to your office some time next week with mehul to see what help we can give you. (Kenneth - hold you comments).

too busy rolling on the floor and laughing out loud to make a comment.

On Wednesday 20 May 2009 11:58:16 scrapo wrote:

...

too busy rolling on the floor and laughing out loud to make a comment.

Ah, you see, this time i am involving mehul with me, so we will be doing it

in which case, why do you not involve mehul to evaluate avsap? If you commit to this, I will update it to work with the latest python/wxpython/postgres. Note that I have been in the Queue far longer than gnukhatha.

Again one quick comment that's why top posting (and i won't oppologise because it is like slapping some one and then saying "sorry for herting you ") Any ways, I am happy that this thread has triggered some productive discussion (jtd, you said what I wanted to say ).

All I suggest is that we should evaluate both of these softwares and also exchange views. Mehul you are most welcome as Anusha said for visiting and doing live testing and demo and learning things which you might find difficult. And testing the other software might bennifit us too, so it will be great if you could do that as well. We wante to keep a dedicated team to maintain gnukhata and also provide a unit for deployment.

happy hacking. Krishnakant.

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 17:35 +0530, anusha k wrote:

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 4:57 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.orgwrote:

...

On Wednesday 20 May 2009 11:58:16 scrapo wrote:

...

...

too busy rolling on the floor and laughing out loud to make a comment.

Ah, you see, this time i am involving mehul with me, so we will be doing

it

in which case, why do you not involve mehul to evaluate avsap? If you ommit t this, I will update it to work with the latest python/wxpython/postgres. Note that I have been in the Queue far longer than gnukhatha.

It would be great if he can evaluate both gnukhata and avsap.Besides this i want to add that as mehul and we are living in the same city,so he can visit our office for live demos etc.

I would also add that we will be providing services like deployment and customization of software if the customers want to have.

Njoy the share of Freedom, Anusha Kadambala

...

-- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/ -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 9:50 PM, scrapo scrapo@saswatabanerjee.com wrote:

Mehul, can you please evaluate your time commitment on other projects and see if you can also review and help complete avsap. I have many times promised to help with it but never got off ground due to technical issues. It should be fun......

Yes, I am myself interested in testing out both the packages. This week will not be possible but next week should be relatively lower on the work load so we can plan it for next week. I will anyway be testing a bit of gnukhata as of now at home. But, giving it some dedicated time would be definitely more useful for everyone. So, it would be great if avsap is brought upto date by then.

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 11:41 +0530, scrapo wrote:

Hey mehul, Once you finish playing with the software and are satisfied of the basics (you have already seen other software we use), please put it in Progress Partners office server for us to use. I will provide you with accounting data of Q4 2006-07 to put in for testing so that we can give a feedback on live data.

Thanks a lot. This feedback will be valuable. By the way there are no 10 femailes in the project, just 4 of them.

Krishnakant, I will come over to your office some time next week with mehul to see what help we can give you. (Kenneth - hold you comments). I heard there are 10 ladies in your development team......

(In case you did not know, Progress Partners is an accounting and consulting firm of which i am a partner, so this project is of direct business interest to us).

We would love to work with you and it is nice to know that at least some solution will be out for liberating people from the hold of tally and provide freedom to accounting and finance sector. happy hacking. Krishnakant.

On Wednesday 20 May 2009 23:06:30 Rony wrote:

How will the data from Tally get imported into Gnukhata?

how is data exported from Tally?

On Fri, 2009-05-22 at 00:05 +0530, Rony wrote:

Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

...

On Wednesday 20 May 2009 23:06:30 Rony wrote:

...

How will the data from Tally get imported into Gnukhata?

how is data exported from Tally?

No idea. Only know the Backup and Restore feature which is of no use in this case.

Priyanka, one of our hackers is also a tally expert and has been a programmer at tally corporation. So according to her, they export to excel (in essence we can get csv ) and all that our system needs is all the vouchers. One very interesting feature of our system is that the vouchers will trigger the ledger posting system and not the other way round. This means once we import the vouchers into our system, we have the related stuff generated automatically. happy hacking. Krishnakant.

-- Regards,

Rony.

GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 2:01 PM, anusha k anuhacks@gmail.com wrote:

Hi mehul, you should run the start.py which is present in gnukhata_alpha/gnukhata-client.

This needs to be corrected in the document. I will update the document and post the details on gnukhata mailing list.

On Tuesday 19 May 2009, Mrugesh Karnik wrote:

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 14:12:16 Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

...

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 13:25:36 Krishnakant wrote:

...

Do keep posting about the feedbacks or ask on about any feature. We have the mailing list at gnu-khata@googlegroups.com right now.

first feedback: The INSTALL document states:

<quote> to use postgresql for the first time there is a dedicated administrator account called postgres. This will be the user we will use for the database. We must set a password for that user. to change/ reset the password, sudo passwd postgres for ubuntu or just su passwd postgres for any other sudo less distro of gnu/linux and hit enter. enter the password ''gkadmin'' and re-type for confirmation. <endquote>

This is brain-dead!

Best is to just ask the user to have a database with the appropriate access details ready.

As it is, for a desktop app, it doesn't make sense to tell user to go configure a postgresql or even mysql database. Why not just use sqlite or mysql embedded instead?

Requirement of postgresql for a desktop app is just plain dumb, even for a fan such as myself.

Suddenly, the mysql embedded move by amarok and akonadi devs makes sense (if it didn't already).

Is GNUKhata a desktop app? From Anusha and Kirshnakant's presentation at the last freed.in, the impression I got was of a financial/accounting application server that leaves the choice of front-ends to the user. And frankly, if I'm using GK for any serious accounting I personally would be very happy if it's running PostgreSQL and not some toy database. Specially not some toy database that is owned today by a company whose credentials in the FOSS world aren't all that hot. At the risk of being rude (not that I'd be doing something that has never happened before on this list ;) suggesting that corporates keep decades worth of critical accounting data in, e.g., SQLite is just plain dumb. At least until you show me at least one serious FA/ERP system that has been adopted by corporates and uses SQLite as the back-end RDBMS.

Having said that, maybe KK & co. could investigate the possibility of putting in a database abstraction layer in GNHKhata; if you do that you could let users choose which RDBMS they wish to use depending on their needs and their environment. I'm sure Mrugesh would be happy to create the necessary triggers, etc. to make the abstraction layer work with SQLite :)

Regards,

-- Raju

Just one quick comment on this email, sorry for top posting. As Raj rightly pointed out all the details I won't re-iterate on that. But this is the last time I am saying this as I did time and time again. The system is supposed to scalable and work at enterprise level or on medium scale organisations such as NGOs and small businesses. I think there are a lot of personal financial softwares and people are free to choose any of them.

And if at all one wants to use GNUKhata on a home bases, ny all means do so once deb and rpm packages are available. i don't think end-user is even going to be aware of postgresql or mysql or any thing.

happy hacking. Krishnakant.

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 08:33 +0530, Raj Mathur wrote:

On Tuesday 19 May 2009, Mrugesh Karnik wrote:

...

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 14:12:16 Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

...

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 13:25:36 Krishnakant wrote:

...

Do keep posting about the feedbacks or ask on about any feature. We have the mailing list at gnu-khata@googlegroups.com right now.

first feedback: The INSTALL document states:

<quote> to use postgresql for the first time there is a dedicated administrator account called postgres. This will be the user we will use for the database. We must set a password for that user. to change/ reset the password, sudo passwd postgres for ubuntu or just su passwd postgres for any other sudo less distro of gnu/linux and hit enter. enter the password ''gkadmin'' and re-type for confirmation. <endquote>

This is brain-dead!

Best is to just ask the user to have a database with the appropriate access details ready.

As it is, for a desktop app, it doesn't make sense to tell user to go configure a postgresql or even mysql database. Why not just use sqlite or mysql embedded instead?

Requirement of postgresql for a desktop app is just plain dumb, even for a fan such as myself.

Suddenly, the mysql embedded move by amarok and akonadi devs makes sense (if it didn't already).

Is GNUKhata a desktop app? From Anusha and Kirshnakant's presentation at the last freed.in, the impression I got was of a financial/accounting application server that leaves the choice of front-ends to the user. And frankly, if I'm using GK for any serious accounting I personally would be very happy if it's running PostgreSQL and not some toy database. Specially not some toy database that is owned today by a company whose credentials in the FOSS world aren't all that hot. At the risk of being rude (not that I'd be doing something that has never happened before on this list ;) suggesting that corporates keep decades worth of critical accounting data in, e.g., SQLite is just plain dumb. At least until you show me at least one serious FA/ERP system that has been adopted by corporates and uses SQLite as the back-end RDBMS.

Having said that, maybe KK & co. could investigate the possibility of putting in a database abstraction layer in GNHKhata; if you do that you could let users choose which RDBMS they wish to use depending on their needs and their environment. I'm sure Mrugesh would be happy to create the necessary triggers, etc. to make the abstraction layer work with SQLite :)

Regards,

-- Raju

Raj Mathur raju@kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 10:05 PM, Rony gnulinuxist@gmail.com wrote:

Is the "dedicated administrator account" the system administrator or only administrator for the database?

Administrator account for postgresql.

On Wednesday 20 May 2009 11:38:00 scrapo wrote:

My suggestion is not to make this a Linux only software, but to immediately work to port it to windows. A software that is working only in linux will not be adopted widely enough and most important, the auditors will not accept it as they cant see the software in their own office.

since all the components of the application are available on doze, I am sure it will run there out of the box. 'Porting' will only be necessary if you want MSSQL server as the backend.

On Wednesday 20 May 2009 11:49:02 scrapo wrote:

...

since all the components of the application are available on doze, I am sure it will run there out of the box. 'Porting' will only be necessary if you want MSSQL server as the backend.

um...... you know windows users. where is the exe file ????

sysadmin will look after that (and py2exe is also available)

On Wednesday 20 May 2009 11:57:29 scrapo wrote:

...

sysadmin will look after that (and py2exe is also available)

sysadmin ??? On a windows machine ?

I think you have been on pure linux environment too long and have forgotten how things work in most offices, specially SME

no big deal to make an exe file to kick off the app. Only take a few seconds.

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 22:56 +0530, Rony wrote:

How many things do you want to dump on the poor sysadmin? He has enough problems maintaining doze machines.

Then he is not a sysadmin (at least not a professionally trained and paied one ). Sysadmins are supposed to take care of all the work, hence the high salaries and generally demand for good experience. Sysadmins are there only for such kind of work like installation and maintaining systems and tuning work. generally when there is a deployment cycle, the most important trainning is given to the sysadmin. And if he thinks it is a trouble to maintain windows servers in particular (not to mention that 80% of servers run non-windows OS), then it is the problem of the management or the sysadmin who fails to convince the management about the reality.

happy hacking. Krishnakant.

-- Regards,

Rony.

GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.

postgresql works on windows too. happy hacking. Krishnakant.

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 11:42 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:

On Wednesday 20 May 2009 11:38:00 scrapo wrote:

...

My suggestion is not to make this a Linux only software, but to immediately work to port it to windows. A software that is working only in linux will not be adopted widely enough and most important, the auditors will not accept it as they cant see the software in their own office.

since all the components of the application are available on doze, I am sure it will run there out of the box. 'Porting' will only be necessary if you want MSSQL server as the backend. -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/