gnucash: reports are displayed as HTML text rather than being rendered

[tlevine]

Basic info

$ uname -a
Linux tlevine 4.1.13 #1-NixOS SMP Thu Jan 1 00:00:01 UTC 1970 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ nixos-version
16.03pre73316.93d8671 (Emu)
$ nix-env --version
nix-env (Nix) 1.10
$ nix-instantiate --eval '<nixpkgs>' -A lib.nixpkgsVersion
"16.03pre73316.93d8671"

I will mention building with webkit; this is the patch for that.

$ git diff --p
diff --git i/pkgs/applications/office/gnucash/2.6.nix w/pkgs/applicatio[62/197]
e/gnucash/2.6.nix
index 3c2348b..6a0bf11 100644
--- i/pkgs/applications/office/gnucash/2.6.nix
+++ w/pkgs/applications/office/gnucash/2.6.nix
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 , intltool, glib, gtk, libofx, aqbanking, gwenhywfar, libgnomecanvas, goffice
 , webkit, glibcLocales, gsettings_desktop_schemas, makeWrapper, dconf, file
 , gettext, swig, slibGuile, enchant, bzip2, isocodes, libdbi, libdbiDrivers
+, webkitgtk
 }:

 /*
@@ -27,6 +28,8 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
     glib gtk goffice webkit
     # gnome...
     dconf gconf libgnomecanvas gsettings_desktop_schemas
+    # html reports
+    webkitgtk
     # financial
     libofx aqbanking gwenhywfar
     # perl

Issue

One present issue with the GnuCash package is that HTML reports
are displayed as HTML text rather than being rendered.

Why it's broken

I read in ./configure --help that the HTML engine is webkit

  --with-html-engine=[webkit]
                          Obsolete: Only webkit is used as HTML engine now

and saw a corresponding include in the GnuCash source code,

#include <webkit/webkit.h>

so I tried building with nixos.webkit. Alas, that didn't change anything.
I also didn't see anything when I set the --debug flag.

There's apparently some difficulty in installing webkit with Nix
so I guess the issue is that we don't have a good webkit package
and that GnuCash doesn't make it obvious when this is broken.

[aszlig]

That difficulty you're listing here isn't related to Nix(OS) but to a WebKit port also called Nix.

[tlevine]

Well that's promising. I guess I'll just need to look closer at the
webkit and gnucash packages.

On 21 Mar 09:08, aszlig wrote:

That difficulty you're listing here isn't related to Nix(OS) but to a WebKit port also called Nix.

---

You are receiving this because you authored the thread.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#14105 (comment)

[layus]

Any update on this ?

[layus]

@tlevine, @aszlig This has been stalled for one year. May I suggest to close this issue ?

[tlevine]

That's okay I have stopped using GnuCash, so I am unlikely to contribute anymore to this anyway.

…

On Thu, Aug 17, 2017, at 09:00, Guillaume Maudoux wrote: @tlevine, @aszlig This has been stalled for one year. May I suggest to close this issue ? -- You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #14105 (comment)

[layus]

Great, but I cannot do it myself, only the OP or an administrator can close issues

[theNerd247]

Are others still having an issue - because I am and am willing to fix this.

[aszlig]

@layus: I'm not using GnuCash, so I don't have the issue, I was just clarifying on the OP.

@theNerd247: Thanks in advance :-)

[theNerd247]

So I spent all day and couldn't make heads or tails of what's going on. The debug output from gnucash didn't add any info and upgrading to 2.6.19 didn't help either. Due to time I've switched to hledger which suites my needs. Sorry!

[tlevine]

I thought that I asked for help on this on the GNUCash mailing list over two years ago, but I see now that I in fact never sent that email draft. Since we have all failed to figure this out, I have asked for help on the GNUCash mailing list. https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2018-March/075812.html If nobody gives us an easy answer there or if you have already lost interest, then I suggest that someone make a note explaining that it is broken and then we close this issue. Is there a special place to make notes about broken things? Otherwise, I guess a warning in postInstall would be okay. theNerd247 writes:

Due to time I've switched to hledger which suites my needs. Sorry!

I too switched to ledger derivatives.

[tlevine]

John Ralls has responded to my inquiry:

> On Mar 31, 2018, at 11:18 AM, Thomas Levine ***@***.***> wrote: > > We have managed to package GNUCash in Nix such that reports are rendered > as text rather than HTML. That is, the HTML source code is displayed as > text rather than as rendered tables and lines and styled text. > #14105 > > Does anyone have ideas of what we have done wrong? I'd have to guess that you're not getting webkit properly integrated or that there's something wrong with the webkit build. Start by looking closely at the build output for libgncmodule-html. Regards, John Ralls

I suggest that the next step is to follow Mr. Ralls's suggestion. That said, I personally will not look further at the GNUCash packaging at the moment.

[stale]

Thank you for your contributions.

This has been automatically marked as stale because it has had no activity for 180 days.

If this is still important to you, we ask that you leave a comment below. Your comment can be as simple as "still important to me". This lets people see that at least one person still cares about this. Someone will have to do this at most twice a year if there is no other activity.

Here are suggestions that might help resolve this more quickly:

1. Search for maintainers and people that previously touched the related code and @ mention them in a comment.
2. Ask on the NixOS Discourse.
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[sjamaan]

I've been using GNUCash for a while now and never ran into this particular issue. I think it can be closed. It probably got fixed years ago.

[patka-123]

Hello @tlevine 👋

It seems like this issue has been fixed by now. Would you be able to close this issue?

(I'm going trough issues marked as stale to see what can be resolved. If this is still an issue that needs a fix, then don't mind me)