Free Software Accountant

[Matt Graham]

After a long battle with technology, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
> GNUCash does not export to CSV?!?!  CSV is the common denominator in the
> accounting world and can be formatted to be imported into just about any
> other app.

GNUcash's native data format is a semi-complex XML structure.  While it would 
be possible to convert most of that into CSV, you'd lose some data or make 
some data incomprehensible[0].  Y'know, things like currency units, GUIDs, 
and split transactions might get garbled.  I think that may be why they don't 
have it available by default.  That or they couldn't find out a way to do it 
that wouldn't upset somebody.  (Or the code's so hairy that nobody wants to 
work on it.  I've been using GNUcash since mid-2000, and though it does what 
I need it to do, its list of dependencies is scary.)

[0] OK, "more incomprehensible than it is already".

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