Glossary

The Glossary explains some often used terms.

" " ... @

$ 

is the starting symbol of variable names under Linux, similar to %variable% under Windows.

$HOME 

contains the path to your home directory.

Windows Note: $HOME is at %SYSDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\%USER%\. For example, if your system is :installed on C: and your username is "foo", $HOME is C:\Documents and Settings\foo.

A

AqBanking 

a library, which implements the german Home Banking Computer Interface HBCI and Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard EBICS, besides OFX Direct Connect and Paypal. It is the successor of openHBCI. See AqBanking for use in GnuCash.

D

DBMS 

Data Base Management System, like mySQL or PostgreSQL

DocBook 

a Semantics markup language for technical documentation based on XML. The content can then be published in a variety of formats, including HTML, XHTML, EPUB, PDF, man pages, Web help and HTML Help, without requiring users to make any changes to the source. Documentation is available with DocBook: The Definitive Guide.

Doxygen 

a tool for the automated generation of source code documentation. doxygen.org says that "Doxygen is a documentation system for C++, C, Java, IDL (Corba and Microsoft flavors) and to some extent PHP and C#."

G

GAAP 

stands for "Generally Accepted Accounting Principles", the rules by which Business Accounting has to be done, especially in the U.S. and some other countries.

GConf 

Gnome's Configuration Sytem is used by GnuCash to store its configuration.

g-wrap 

a tool for creating Scheme interfaces to C libraries and vice versa. (replaced by swig for SVN-trunk and gnucash >= 2.2.0 anymore.)

gtk+ 

the GIMP Tool Kit. It is the underlying graphical library that is used by GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, but also by the whole Gnome desktop. gtk.org says that "GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off projects to complete application suites."

guile 

GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions is an interpreter for the Scheme programming language, packaged as a library which can be incorporated into your programs. Other interpreters for Scheme are e.g. MIT Scheme, UMB Scheme, Luna, Hobbit, and many others.

Guppi 

a GNOME-based framework for graphing and interactive data analysis. This library created the pie charts and bar charts in GnuCash. Unfortunately, its development has been abandoned.

H

HBCI/FinTS 

a bank-independent online banking protocol used by German banks. HBCI (Home Banking Computer Interface) has been developed by the German Central Banking Committee ZKA (Zentraler Kredit-Ausschuss). The standard is publicly available and is used by approx. 50% of German banks, but nowhere else in this world. Since 2002 it is called „Financial Transaction Services“ (FinTS). In GnuCash it can be used via AqBanking.

L

LibOFX 

an Open Source library for OFX (see below). It was created by one of the GnuCash developers (Benoit Gregoire), originally to be the OFX interface for GnuCash.

M

MT940 

a financial information standard defined by SWIFT and used by several European banks. It is also used internally in HBCI. Unfortunately, you can't download the MT940 standard, but some banks (like this one) publish it on their web site.

O

OFX 

the Open Financial eXchange format. This is a financial information standard (i.e. a file format standard) documented at http://www.ofx.net/DeveloperSolutions.aspx

OpenHBCI 

was an Open Source implementation of the German HBCI. It was replaced in 2004 by AqBanking.

Q

QOF

Abbreviation of the Gnucash internal module Query Object Framework.

S

Scheme 

a functional programming language, a dialect of Lisp. There's a little more information at http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/projects/scheme/, where they'll tell you that "Scheme is a statically scoped and properly tail-recursive dialect of the Lisp programming language invented by Guy Lewis Steele Jr. and Gerald Jay Sussman.", but there are several tutorials like anotherSchemeTtutorial. Use your preferred web search to find them.

SWIG 

The Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator is 'a tool that connects programs written in C and C++ with a variety of high-level programming languages', here for creating Scheme interfaces to C libraries and vice versa. (Replacement for g-wrap since gnucash 2.2.0 )

X

xacc

Abbreviation of XAccountant.

XAccountant

The Motif based ancestor of Gnucash.

XML 

The eXtensible Markup Language can be seen as an abstraction of HTML. It is often used to store e.g.

• structured data like your GnuCash file or
• technical documentation in Docbook

[ ... ~

~ 

In a path name it has the same meaning as $HOME.