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ad-si / Transity

Keep track of your 💵, 🕘, 🐖, 🐄, 🍻 on your command line with the plain text accounting tool of the future! 🚀
https://ad-si.github.io/Transity/
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
635 stars 17 forks source link

Enter transactions from CLI #35

Open xeruf opened 3 years ago

xeruf commented 3 years ago

Before diving into the Readme, I thought this tool would allow me to record spendings from the command-line, something like transity transaction --to anna --amount 300€ accounting.yaml (with --from being inferred to my default account)

Did I miss something in the Readme or have I misunderstood the purpose of this tool?

ad-si commented 3 years ago

The idea behind plaintext accounting is, that a text editor is an incredible powerful and efficient tool to enter data. So it's much easier to just enter your data with your text editor of choice into a journal.yaml file, then to have a GUI, or TUI, or CLI prompt to enter the data. You use Transity only for analysis and verification of the transactions. Checkout the online demo at https://www.feram.io/transity/ for an example what the journal file must look like. Does this answer your question?

ad-si commented 3 years ago

That said, I might at a CLI command to add transactions as you described in the future to simplify automated usage of the tool …

xeruf commented 3 years ago

I think this could be clearer by changing the GitHub about blurb from "Keep track of your ..." to "Analyze ..." or something like that, if you know what I mean?

But yes, I do understand that. I already use Emacs and Neovim and am on the lookout for something simple to track e.g. money I've lent someone or some expenses by category. Maybe plain org mode will do, maybe a plugin, maybe a CLI tool, I'm still not quite sure.

It would be nice to add an example of how one is supposed to create/generate the YAML file for this tool: write it by hand? copy-paste? editor plugin? I mean, it is quite verbose and repetitious after all - especially as I have now also looked at the ledger format, which seems rather handy in comparison.

ad-si commented 3 years ago

I think this could be clearer by changing the GitHub about blurb from "Keep track of your ..." to "Analyze ..." or something like that, if you know what I mean?

Mh, interesting thought. I think this would go with a little overhaul of the landing page to make it more beginner friendly for non-plaintext-accouting people.

But yes, I do understand that. I already use Emacs and Neovim and am on the lookout for something simple to track e.g. money I've lent someone or some expenses by category. Maybe plain org mode will do, maybe a plugin, maybe a CLI tool, I'm still not quite sure. It would be nice to add an example of how one is supposed to create/generate the YAML file for this tool: write it by hand? copy-paste? editor plugin?

Yeah, it's a combined write-by-hand and copy-paste kind of thing 😅. Will add it to the documentation. (https://github.com/feramhq/transity/issues/36)

I mean, it is quite verbose and repetitious after all - especially as I have now also looked at the ledger format, which seems rather handy in comparison.

I prefer verbose and repetitious but well known and defined standard format with parsers in basically every format (YAML) over short, but not well defined and only parseable with the original tool.

If that tradeoff is not important for you (and the other unique features listed in the readme), you should probably go with https://hledger.org. It has lots of features, is stable, and has a large ecosystem with plugins and addons.