by NOTE TO LINUX USERS: The Linux binary works fine with XFree 3.x. I mistakenly
mentioned in the last announcement that it didn't. All you need is the a.out
compatability libraries installed.
Announcing the release of Xinvest 1.1, a personal finance package for X.
I consider this release a BETA release. If you download Xinvest, drop me a
note about what you like, don't like, or don't see. This is the best way to
get your pet feature added.
Where is Xinvest?
-----------------
-- the source
ftp.x.org:contrib/applications/xinvest1.1src.tar.gz
-- Linux a.out statically linked binary
ftp.x.org:contrib/applications/xinvest1.1linux.tar.gz
Requirements.
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I've built Xinvest successfully on the following platforms: HPUX, Solaris 2.x,
and Linux. Xinvest requires Motif 1.2 or later, and XPM, also available at
ftp.x.org.
What is Xinvest?
----------------
Xinvest is a personal finance tracking and performance tool.
With Xinvest you can:
Centralize record keeping by storing all transactions in account specific files.
Calculate total and annualized returns including the effects of buys, sells,
and dividends. This provides a means of comparing the results of all accounts
in a portfolio, be they CDs, bonds, mutual funds, or your checking account.
View various transaction parameters such as share price, shares per transaction,
transaction cost, transaction value (at current price), dividends, and/or
cumulative and moving averages of the above. Plots are transaction based bar
or date based x-y charts.
View overall value weightings of accounts in a portfolio. Specify categories,
what percent of an account is in that category, and which accounts are of
interest and Xinvest will tell you the value and percentage of all categories
in the defined portfolio. Predefined is a account category to view weighting,
of accounts in the total portfolio. Categories are hierarchical, so you can
zoom into the makeup of your portfolio. View in text and pie chart form.
A Financial calculator with common equations is provided. Included are FV,
PV, FV of sum of payments, and periodic loan payments. With these you can
determine installment payments, how much you need to save for retirement, etc.
Hopefully, all of this is displayed using an easy-to-use, point-and-click
interface. There are no command line switches, dot files, and X resources are
limited to color and font selection allowing you to tailor the look of the
tool to your own preferences.
What's New.
-----------
1. Bubble help. I've removed the labels from the buttons in the buttonbar.
Now when the mouse enters the area of the button you get a small description
of what that button does. This text is stored in the resource file so
it can be easily changed (my first small attempt at making Xinvest a little
more internationalization friendly).
2. The plot and total return displays inform you if they are based on a NAV
you entered in the total return action area. Otherwise they are based on
the last NAV in the transaction history.
3. A little more information was added to the total return display: total
shares and value.
4. Xinvest will now attempt to recover from a depleted color map. If Xinvest
runs out of colors while allocating named colors or the pixmaps it will
install its own colormap and proceed. This scheme will fail if the named
colors and pixmaps use up all the colors, leaving none left for those
defined in the resource files for widgets.
There is now also a "-install" switch to force a private colormap.
In version 1.0, this condition led to a seg fault :(
5. New way over-engineered insensitive icons for the button bar. If you
have a mono or grayscale monitor you get the old snowed-over effect. Color
displays get a Windows style of insensitive pixmap, its hard to describe.
The button background color is now based on the main window background, so if
you change it from its default gray the button backgrounds will change also.
6. An almost major code reorganization to make my life easier in the future.