Re: Questions and comments

[Jerry <marketing-manure comcast net>]

>>>>> "Jody" == Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org> writes:

> On Mon, Apr 05, 2004 at 06:35:27PM -0700, Jerry wrote:
>> As a Redhat 7.x user , by choice, and a need to use Gnumeric, I
>> found some of the financial functions I needed were missing. Went
>> to the Gnumeric web and found that the latest and greatest 1.1.6

> The latest stable release is 1.2.8.  If you intend to do any
> charting you'll want to update.  There are also numerous stability
> improvements.  1.1.x was a _development_ series, and 1.1.6 was
> fairly early in the cycle.  I would not reccomend it for production
> use.

I found the outdated site , but my problem is still the same. either
I bring the functions to my current world, or I change most of my
world to run Gnumeric with the added functions.

>> had the functions I needed cumipmt & cumprinc, but that wont run
>> without Gnome2 and many other upgrades.

> That is true.  However, it's not as bad as it seems.  gnome2 is much
> tidier about dependencies, and significantly easier to build.  You
> may want to look at some of the available build scripts such as
> garnome, or jhbuild.  That can do all the necessary work.

Not being a programmer by trade, building a new world isn't something I
take lightly, so I try to do what I can, to use what I have, and I do
appreciate the efforts of all the developers, without you It wouldn't
be possible for me to use the open source world.

>> I downloaded the 1.1.6 src and took a look at the functions I
>> wanted, since they should be changes to internal calculations and
>> not GUI stuff.I patched in what I thought was needed and compiled
>> with debug enabled. Cumipmt function now shows "value #" insted of
>> "unimplimented", step in the right direction.
> That may work.  There were a few changes in the way functions are
> declared (to provide more status information), but nothing massive.
> The interfaces should be pretty much unchanged.  You're playing with
> fire, but it has a chance.

cumipmt is broken down into 4 functions gnumeric_cumipmt, get_cumipmt,
GetRmz, GetZw, most of which makes since , even to me. one big
difference is the way numbers.h is setup. I don't understand what
powgumn is. its either pow or powl, but when or why? Yes I am willing
to burn for a while, before It get to hot.

>> I tried to set breakpoints under GDB and see whats happening.  When
>> I run Gnumeric under GDB the breakpoints don't trigger and the GDB
>> prompt doesn't return, until Gnumeric is exited? What am I missing?

> Hmm, in 1.0.x the functions were still in the core (in 1.2.x they
> are in plugins) so there's no worries about a breakpoitn in code
> that has not yet been loaded.  I'm guessing that the #VALUE is being
> produced by the argument marshaller, if you pass something invalid
> to an argument the marshaller catches it before it even gets to the
> routine.

Thanks

>> Maybe someone with more programming talent could impliment the new
>> functions back into the old world, as they really are internal, and
>> I'm not the only one out here, that isn't running a current
>> development system.

> I'd hope that gnome2 is no longer considered cutting edge by any
> stretch of the imagination.  It should be available on all platforms
> by now, and offers significant improvements.

At this point improvements are expensive, in both time and energy, as
you well know, and I just can afford that level, right now.

> Good Luck

Thanks

Jerry