<article id="xacc-whats-new">
  <artheader>
    <title>
      Was ist neu
    </title>
  </artheader>
  <sect1>
    <title>
      Was ist neu in GnuCash 1.6?
    </title>
    
    <para>
      Wir, das GnuCash Entwickler-Team, heißen alle bisherigen GnuCash
      Benutzer herzlichen willkommen. Seit der Version 1.4 hat sich
      eine Menge verändert, und wir glauben, daß die neue Version für
      alle Anwender eine eindeutige Verbesserung darstellt. Praktisch
      jeder Teil des Programms hat sich verändert und eine ganze Reihe
      von neuen Funktionen sind hinzugekommen.
    </para>
    <sect2>
      <title>
	Neues Dateiformat
      </title>
      <para>
	Wir sind zu einem XML-konformen textbasierten Dateiformat
	gewechselt. GnuCash wird Ihre bestehenden 1.4 Dateien
	problemlos lesen. Wenn Sie Ihre Daten speichern, wird die
	Version 1.6 allerdings immer das neue Format verwenden.</para>
	<para>Das neue Format ist um Größenordnungen flexibler als das
	alte Format und das war eine notwendige Bedingung, um neue
	Funktionen hinzufügen zu können. Ebenso können auch erst auf
	diese Weise in Zukunft immer neue Funktionen
	dazukommen. Zusätzlich können die Dateien jetzt, da sie aus
	XML bestehen, viel einfacher von externen Hilfsprogrammen
	bearbeitet werden.
      </para>
      <para>
	Wir haben das neue Format ausgiebig getestet. Trotzdem ist es
	-- wie immer -- sinnvoll, eine Sicherheitskopie Ihrer alten
	Daten aufzuheben. Nur für den Fall der Fälle.
      </para>
      
      <para>
	Beispielhaft für die Verbesserungen, die durch das neue
	Dateiformat ermöglicht wurde, sei hier das interne
	Zahlenformat genannt. Bisher benutzte GnuCash 1.4 nur
	Gleitkommazahlen (floating-point) wie das auch ein
	Taschenrechner machen würde. Leider führt das früher oder
	später zu Rundungsfehlern, die z.B. beim Währungsumtausch
	sichtbar wurden. In der neuen Version ist das Zahlenformat zu
	Fixkommazahlen (fixed-point) geändert, so daß alle Beträge
	jetzt exakt mit der jeweils benötigten Genauigkeit gespeichert
	werden. Diese existenziell wichtige Funktion ist teilweise
	nicht einmal in horrend teurer "Enterprise-level" Software für
	Unternehmen zu finden.
       </para>
    </sect2>
    
    <sect2>
      <title>
	Neue Benutzeroberfläche
      </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 it's probably
	more interesting to show you just how good they look:
      </para>
      <para><emphasis>PICTURES NEEDED!</emphasis></para>
    </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>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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