[💰20$ bounty] Inconsistent alignment for currencies with long names

[nobodyinperson]

Hi!

Situation

I am using hledger for inventory/asset management in my research project. It works great to keep track of where categories of things are and to a degree even for tracking individual objects (via identifying tags). The best solution for my application turned out to be quoted long currency names for types of things (better readability and searchability via cur:'.*keyword.*').

Problem

However, hledger balance seems to have a hard-coded (minimum?) currency column width which works fine for short currencies (like USD or EUR) and otherwise calculate the currency indentation per-account. This leads to weird indentations and breaks the nice accounts tree view. I didn't find anything concerning this in the online documentation.

Example

Cooked-up example journal test.hledger:

2019/12/09 Outdoor
    [room:workshop]      5 "80 watt solar panel" @@ 500.00 EUR
    [room:workshop]      1 "rugged outdoor laptop" @@ 1000.00 EUR
    [store]

2019/12/09 Car
    [room:garage]     4 "car tires" @@ 300.00 EUR
    [store]

lsb_release -a
# Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
# Description:	Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
# Release:	18.04
# Codename:	bionic
# docker image https://hub.docker.com/r/dastapov/hledger
hledger --version
# hledger 1.16.1
hledger -f test.hledger balance
#   5 "80 watt solar panel"
#             4 "car tires"
# 1 "rugged outdoor laptop"  room
#        4 "car tires"    garage
#   5 "80 watt solar panel"
# 1 "rugged outdoor laptop"    workshop
#         -1800.00 EUR  store
# --------------------
#   5 "80 watt solar panel"
#              -1800.00 EUR
#             4 "car tires"
# 1 "rugged outdoor laptop"

I'd rather expect an output like this (all currencies indented like in the total summary):

hledger -f test.hledger balance
#   5 "80 watt solar panel"
#             4 "car tires"
# 1 "rugged outdoor laptop"  room
#             4 "car tires"    garage
#   5 "80 watt solar panel"
# 1 "rugged outdoor laptop"    workshop
#              -1800.00 EUR  store
# --------------------
#   5 "80 watt solar panel"
#              -1800.00 EUR
#             4 "car tires"
# 1 "rugged outdoor laptop"

Solution

For example:

• calculating the longest currency name in advance and using that as a currency column size
• let user specify a forced currency column width via command-line flag

PS: hledger is really awesome!

[simonmichael]

Thanks! I'm going to note that this is about the balance command, and relabel it as an enhancement request. It may relate to issue #1045 and PR #1052 which are about aligning the output of print.

[simonmichael]

Can you achieve anything useful with the --format option ? https://hledger.org/hledger.html#customising-the-classic-balance-report

[nobodyinperson]

Ah, yes by slightly modifying the default format like balance --format "%100.100(total) %2(depth_spacer)%-(account) it is possible to force the currency column width. Must've jumped over that section in the docs, sorry.

Still, having hledger determine the optimal column width automatically would be nice, if that's feasible in terms of performance.

[simonmichael]

I see.. yes, I agree the simple balance report should widen the amounts column automatically so that account names are aligned.

[simonmichael]

Relevant code is near https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/master/hledger/Hledger/Cli/Commands/Balance.hs#L420, where it gets hard-coded to 20.