April 29
It's hard to believe that it's been over a year since my last news update, but that January 22 item was posted in 2006, and here we find outselves in 2007! Anyway, I have begun work on QHacc 4, and expect to have a pretty usable beta version up in the next month or two. QHacc 4 will be based on Qt 4.2, and will be a bit of a departure from previous releases. For one, I'm scrapping the autotools in favor of qmake, so the build process should be simpler to maintain. It will also be possible to build QHacc 4 natively on windows without losing any functionality. That's all for now, but stay tuned for updates...

January 22
What a long time it's been since a release. It seemed like it was about time, so QHacc v3.5 is out. It is another bugfix release mostly dealing with the plugin databases, but it does include one really nice new feature. The Transaction Editor balance fields now understand simple calculations! You can type in 1+2 and the field will show 3. Nothing groundbreaking, but very handy in some situations. Enjoy!

February 24
3.3 is out! It's a development release, but it doesn't expand too much on what's already in there. The big new features include the ability to void a passed transaction and a per-split taxable flag for transactions. Good stuff. There's also the nascent ability to handle market transactions. (Market transactions were in the original QHacc many years ago, but were removed. Just like the serial killer in a bad horror movie, they're back.) Enjoy, world.

December 8
Well, I hope that wait wasn't too bad for anyone. After two days of thinking, I have decided to release Q/KHacc v3.2.3. The big stuff here is the addition of SQLite3 support to the growing list of plugins, and a couple previously-mentioned translations. Also in there are several bugfixes I'm keen on: drag-and-drop is reenabled from the Viewer now, and the installation paths of the program have better organized for program packagers.

December 6
I've updated the screenshots page with a couple more recent captures from QHacc. These show the new (as of 7 months ago) detachable panels, journals, and dropboxes. The one of the main window also shows off a bit of the i18n support in the -Haccs.

By the way, version 3.2.2 was released at the end of October. It included the GPG plugin as well as an updated-for-0.70 libOFX plugin as wel as several other improvements. Work is continuing on v3.2.3, which should be out by Christmas. 3.2.3 will include SQLite3 support, Bulgarian and Spanish translations, and several bugfixes dealing with drag-and-drop problems. It should also be much easier for program packagers to handle, so look for more widespread distribution, too.

September 25
Development is still progressing here at QHacc HQ. I have just completed work on a new plugin for Q/KHacc: the GnuPG plugin. It is now possible to encrypt your data during saves, and decrypt it during loads. The plugin requires the GnuPG and GPGME libraries to work, so it will not be built by default, but it's in there. You can access the latest code from CVS.

September 2
Q/KHacc 3.2.1 has been released to the unwashed (and washed) masses. This is purely a bugfix release, and it really only contains one big bugfix. It seems that the engine had a bug that caused crashes more or less randomly. The patch released below helped the problem, but it turned out that it didn't go far enough to fix it. That's what this release is for. And the bug is significant enough that it got its very own release. Enjoy. And keep the bug reports coming!

August 14
Hello again, Web. There's a new patch available here for the -Haccs that fixes a pretty significant problem. The most noticeable instance of this bug is a segfault when trying to resize QHacc's main window while using the QHACC_HOME from the easysetup directory. Yup, it crashes. My hunch is that this same bug affects the upgrade process in some cases, and that it may be responsible for several other heretofore-unexplained crashes, especially when using the native database.

So, to sum up, if you think the -Haccs are unstable, give this patch a try.

August 1
It's official: Q/KHacc is now stabler than ever. In fact, this may be the stablest release yet. (Yes, I know that more stable and most stable, but it's not funner to write. (Okay, that should have been as much fun.).) The 3.2 release is out. And, yes, as I predicted way back on June 1^st, 3.2 is much better that 3.0. This release fixes a couple problems from the 3.1.1 release, which itself included quite a few fixes for the 3.1 release. For the record, there aren't many changes, but the codebase has now proven itself to be stable, so a stable release was in order.

June 24
So it took a whole month; what's it to you? Yes folks, QHacc and KHacc are back and better than ever. Version 3.1 has been released to roars of cheering crowds. All right, not many cheering crowds, but still. Okay, no cheering crowds.

The good news is that the ever-improving QHacc engine now supports loan transactions in accounts. Yes, you enter your transacton, and the engine figures out how much goes to interest and how much goes to principal. There's other stuff too: the SQLite Hybrid database is much faster than it used to be; the Viewer has had about ten segfault locations removed from it; and perhaps most impressively, QHacc can now be compiled natively on windows. It's not exactly the same as in X11 environments, but it's still exciting. Along these same lines, Debian users out there should be able to compile this code without applying any patches.

June 1
It's been nearly a week since the last update, so I figured I was due. I have just this moment finished implementing a loan calculator of sorts for the -Haccs. The changes are in CVS already, so it's now possible for the QHacc engine to figure out what part of a loan payment should go to interest and what part should go to principal. There are a couple caveats (the engine assumes interest is compounded monthly, for example), so read the docs before going hog-wild. Whenever this feature gets released, it's going to require an upgrade. (I'm very sorry about this. I can't stand upgrades as a rule, but I'm afraid I'm just short-sighted enough to make them necessary to accommodate new features.)

In other news, I've gotten a fair amount of feedback from users of the 3.0 series. It looks like there are a couple bugs that can make life with QHacc less than joyful. I'm working on them. You can't create a memorized transaction from the Viewer anymore, and cut-and-paste is a bit flakey. Hopefully, v3.2 will be much better.

May 24
This is it, folks: version 3.0 has been released! And not just QHacc 3.0, but KHacc 3.0 as well. Yes, KHacc skipped 1.2 version numbers and pulled even with QHacc in that department. It seemed only reasonable: they two have identical featuresets.

So what's so special about the new 3.0 series? For one thing, it is (hopefully) stable, so if you've been holding on to your v2.8 install for these last twelve months (almost to the day!), it's time to upgrade. I can't even describe the number of improvements you'll see after the upgrade. You'll get increased database performance, increased interface performance, more support for plugins, memorized transactions, and transaction templates, and an all-around better interface. Better Viewer, better chooser, drag-and-drop, and detachable windows.

For slightly more adventurous users, v3.0 brings a number of incremental improvements over v2.9.9. The Viewer sorts non-AMERICAN dates correctly again, and lineedits handle double-entry accounts a bit better. Most importantly, I think, is that performance has been markedly increased during startup and shutdown. This is especially apparent for large datasets, but you should see a difference even with smallish ones, especially on shutdown.

April 7
Today marks the first day of the 2.9.9/1.7.9 era! Make a note in your calendar. It's true: this afternoon, I released QHacc 2.9.9 and KHacc 1.7.9. Both of these releases feature so many advances that it's hard to know where to start. The biggest news, hands down, is that performance of the SQLite and SQLite Hybrid plugins has been dramatically improved over previous versions. It's a big enough change that I can recommend them for everyday use guilt-free. Of course, all the other plugins still work as well as ever (including the MySQL one, which had a small bug in the creation script).

The other HUGE news is that the Account Chooser has been moved into a Toolbox-like widget that allows you (the user) to organize accounts however you see fit. All the same features are in there of course, it's just that your accounts will be more easily found. Along these same lines, the Account and Journal Choosers have been placed in detachable panels for easy manipulation.

The other tidbits of big news: I've completed a backport of the QHacc sources to use Qt 3.0.X. There's a patch in the contrib directory if you don't have at least Qt 3.2. I've also included an initial Spanish translation in the qm directory. My Spanish isn't that good, so if you're fluent, I'd love to hear from you.

Other than all the big news items, there is a plethora of smaller items that I won't get into here. This is a big release, though. Enjoy!

February 15
Well, it had to happen sometime: QHacc and KHacc have been re-released! The latest version numbers are 2.9.8 and 1.7.8, respectively. This release features a new plugin architecture for graphing and reporting, which is probably more important for KHacc, because it means that it can more easily stay in synch with QHacc in those areas. QHacc benefits as well, of course, because there is a new level of consistency between the GUI and CLI reports, and an easier CLI interface for calling the reports. It also means that reporting and graphing can be extended easily. Also for this release, KHacc has been re-ported from QHacc sources, so there should be no discrepancies between the two programs. Here's hoping!

For QHacc, the makefiles have been straightened out and the header files are much less dependent on each other. The result is that the engine compiles approximately 30% faster. It's not too easy to see the difference because of the larger number of plugins that get compiled now, but it's in there.

KHacc should install cleanly this time around, as all known installation issues have been corrected. I'm still working on the autoconf setup, but it mostly works, and hopefully, it works well enough for the time being. KHacc features updated documentation, as well as a much trimmed down distribution package. All unnecessary or conflicting files have been removed from the package.

Both programs have simplified calling scripts and should be more compatible with each other.

February 9
Looks like KHacc continues to be problematic for me. The 1.7.7 release did not include the khacc shell script that is necessary for launching the program. You can pick up a generic copy of the script here. If you install with the defaults, then you shouldn't have to make any modifications to this script. If you went your own way, you'll probably have to change lines 20 & 24 to reflect your installation paths.

Now that that's out of the way, there's big news coming for the -Haccs! I've just updated CVS with a snapshot of development, and it's pretty exciting. From here on out, all Graphing and Reporting functions are encapsulated in loadable plugins. Yes! I know it's exciting for you, too. The benefits of this change are:

1. the executable size stays small no matter how many different reports or graphs you use
2. KHacc can now stay in much better synch with QHacc
3. plugins can be made to use external libraries such as KOffice's graphing functionality
4. there is greater consistency between the CLI and GUI output

Stay tuned for the next release! I've been promising it forever, I think, but I almost mean it this time when I say it's just around the corner.

February 3
New versions of QHacc and KHacc have been released! We're at the 2.9.6/1.7.6 release level. I think the programs are getting closer and closer to "stable" status, but not quite yet. I'd like a bit more testing before releasing 3.0/2.0 versions. But there is lots of goodness in this release, too.

Part of the fun is that now, the -Haccs can keep their data in CVS. Using the EXTPRG plugin and a script provided, they can check out their datafiles before starting up and commit them on saves. This adds an interesting degree of rollback to the project. There's also a script for generating bogus data, in case you'd like to see how QHacc or KHacc will stand up to different situations. But those are just the "fun" features.

Also included here is a non-interactive command-line interface, the ability for sum sub-accounts into the parent account, a new profit and loss report, and quite a few bugfixes. On the experimental side, the engine now has the ability to import OFX files just like QIFs. (A patch is included that must be applied to libOFX 0.6.6 first.) That, and the libxml dependency has been removed in favor of Qt's XML parser.

This is a development release, but I believe it is quite stable. An upgrade is necessary if you're upgrading and using a plugin database, but otherwise, it's handled silently and non-interactively. Enjoy, and if you find a bug, please let me know ASAP!

January 10
Finally, this year is looking up! I thought it might take a month, but just 22 days after the last release, here's another. Today is the release day for QHacc 2.9.6 and KHacc 1.7.6. Yes, I skipped another number in the KHacc releases. These two releases should be identical in just about all aspects.

Mostly, this release is dedicated to bugfixing. And there have been quite a few since the previous version. I'm still working through the slate of bugs that cropped up since 2.9.2, but I think progress is being made. In particular, memorized transaction entry works much better now, as do The Cliimp! and Upgrade plugins. Graphing and reporting has been improved back to the v2.8 standard, and the click-throughs have been expanded on graphs. You can now click on pie graphs as well as bar graphs to see the transactions that make up that pie/bar. Along these same lines, the subset viewer has been expanded to accept arbitrary selection criteria. There is also a new preference item for different currency decimal separators. Finally, the native database's indexing algorithm has been improved and performance increased.

Yes, all this combine should make for a pretty good release. At least, that's my hope. I'm still aiming for a stable 3.0 release shortly, so if you find a bug, get a report in! (I realize I've been talking about v3.0 since at least September, but I really think it's just around the corner now!)

December 18
At the risk of turning this page into a blog, I have to announce that version 2.9.5 of QHacc has been released. This release fixed several usability bugs that cropped up in the 2.9.3/4 releases. These include the bug in the MySQL plugin that prevented some signals from emitting, the segfault in the transaction scheduler, the cut/copy/paste trio working a bit better (cut didn't actually cut the transaction, it just copied it!), and many more! More did I say? You bet: The QIF importer and "the Cliimp" plugin both work again. So do the import, archive, and restore plugins. Yes, if you're determined to use a development release, this is the one for you.

Besides the bugfixes, there are a couple new features here as well. Probably the biggest is support for alternate currencies. There are a few new preferences on the preferences page, and one of them is an exchange rate field. Putting a number in there wil allow one to multiply or divide the current sums by that number. The engine will keep registering values in the original currency, but the display, reports, and graphs change accordingly.

Besides that, there's also a new External Program plugin for interfacing with shell scripts and such. Check the documentation for details. Oh yeah, and there are updated docs, too. Enjoy!

December 11
That unwanted orphan, KHacc 1.7.4 has finally been released. Okay, it's not unwanted, and it has a direct parent, but it's still been released. It includes all the fixes and features of QHacc 2.9.4, just with a nice KDE sheen. And, no, if you were wondering, there wasn't a 1.7.3 release. I squeezed out two version of QHacc so fast that I didn't have time to release a 1.7.3, so I skipped the version number all together.