[Leaplist] Force a TwinView display for Java app?

[Jason Boxman]

On Sunday 23 September 2007 10:54, Derek Konigsberg wrote:
> On Saturday 22 September 2007 5:44:40 pm Jason Boxman wrote:
> > I've been playing with the Moneydance trial.  It's Java, though, so it
> > doesn't seem understand that my display is actually stitched together
> > with TwinView. Instead, it appears inbetween both monitors, the 'center'
> > of my large display.  The last app I had with this problem was Gnucash 1,
> > but they fixed that in 2.
> >
> > Is there some way to force display affinity under KDE or with some weird
> > Java hack?  I seem to have Java version 1.5.x installed on this box.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > (Heh.  The hack solution would be running it under VNC exported locally,
> > but that's mostly retarded I think.)
>
> Well, I can say (from a quick look-see) that the Java API does allow an
> application to detect the system's display configuration.  However, that
> only helps the application's developers fix it in code.  Couldn't hurt to
> tell them about the problem.

I thought that might be true.

> What do you think of Monkeydance (never heard of it before you mentioned
> it)? And why are you looking at it as opposed to GNUcash?  (honestly, the
> only reason I use GNUcash is because Quicken won't do Linux, and I've yet
> to find anything better.  Still feels like one of those apps good enough
> for advocates, however, but not polished enough for the real world.)

I gave up on GnuCash finally.  The application business logic may be solid, 
but the project management is horrible.  If you're selecting the latest, 
bleeding edge libraries for an accounting app there's something wrong.

It took them three or four years to port to libgtk2 because poor libraries 
were chosen from GNOME v1 that were not ported forward to GNOME2.  Oops.  
There also seems to be zero developer interest.  Oh, and the scripting 
interface is in scheme!  That's about as elitist as it gets.

So, it oughtn't be a huge surprise that Moneydance sports better charting and 
reporting and full OFX support for tons of banks (I can online sync with my 
half dozen or so banks and other accounts without any effort at all).  

GnuCash never bothered to implement online OFX support, and I've grown 
extremely bored manually downloading my account data from each and every 
provider every single month to stay up to date.  I've discovered I don't even 
bother anymore, so I have no clue what's up with my accounts.  That's bad.

My goal isn't to rag on the GnuCash developers, who I'd suspect produce a 
project with quality business rules.  The slow development time, poor 
management decisions, and the lack of developer and user interest it causes, 
finally lost me to a better managed product, though.  (And I backported 30+ 
packages to Debian Sarge from Etch to use the 1.9.x betas back in 2006.)

Anyway, I'd been using the trial, but I'm off to buy the release version of 
Moneydance now.  It's about $30 and you seem to get free upgrades for a few 
years before a $15 discount upgrade kicks in.  Works for me.

Oh, and it supports _budgeting_.  A feature GnuCash has been planning on 
implementation for probably about ten years now.  I might even try it to see 
if it's something I've been missing but never cared about.

One thing you won't seen in Moneydance is proper accounting, with debits and 
credits, though.  While I have enjoyed that, I'm willing to use 
Expense/Income sets with categories instead of accounts with balances if the 
product is otherwise useable.

-- 

Jason Boxman
http://gohideaway.com/ - Vacation Rentals, Ruby-style