Re: [MacPerl] Writing a personal finance system in MacPerl

["Douglas P. McNutt" <dmcnutt@macnauchtan.com>]

>My immediate MacPerl project is to write a simple text-based
>personal finance system to replace Quicken 5
>
>The transaction files and category code files will be simple text files
>(comma delimited) so they can be opened with Excel.
>
Excel is amazing. In spite of Micro$oft it continues to be a quality piece of software. I have done my finances with it since version 2 on a Mac 512.

Where perl could be helpful is in moving data from Excel, perhaps by AppleEvents, into other proprietary software such as Checkfree to enable writing of a check for electronic delivery. Checkfree now allows writing checks through an https connection and I don't know the secrets but they might be either available or hackable.  UBank recently send me a blurb about electronic banking on the net but it turns out to be quite primitive. Maybe they'll get the idea soon.

Another interesting thing I have used perl and Excel for is to prepare *.fdf TEXT files for use with Adobe Acrobat. It's possible to fill in US Internal Revenue Service forms that way while taking data from a spreadsheet.

As for emulating Quicken or Money, why? Excel itself does it all with flexibility and style.

-> From the U S of A, the only socialist country that refuses to admit it. <-

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