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Specifications of Intuit's .QFX Format?
mad.frog asks: "I recently upgraded my ancient version of Quicken to the latest (Macintosh) version, with the intention of being able to download my credit card transactions directly from my bank into Quicken, rather than entering all that stuff by hand. As it turns out, almost no banks support doing this for non-Windows platforms (not surprisingly, Intuit doesn't point this out on the package). But here's the weird part: the information downloaded is just an xml-like text file (.QFX). Anyone know how (or why) they would make such a generic file platform-specific -- what business advantage does Intuit (or my bank) have in restricting how I use this information? Also, does anyone happen to know details of this (apparently undocumented, Intuit-specific) format so that I can hack mine into submission and use this data anyway, even if it's not on my bank's Platform Of Choice?"
Give me your PIN and our Citi online password and I will see if I can get it working for you.
I once saw a marrionette.
I picked it up and commenced to blow
until I was out of breath
then came the dawn, I yelled "Doh!
I was thinking of a clarinet!"
The little feller wasn't too happy
He stomped his little wooden shoe
He made a remark, it was very snappy
A big wooden fist at me he threw
And a splintered lip I had from his slap.
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
"Anyone know how (or why) they would make such a generic file platform-specific -- what business advantage does Intuit (or my bank) have in restricting how I use this information?"
.. well .. that's great, but I think we can get a real business advantage by keeping all of that stuff secret and not using it. Let's just ship the Windows version."
.. they might be working on it. My guess is that the smart thing to do is develop Windows stuff first, make 99% of your users happy, and develop other stuff later.
Yeah, I can see the business meeting now:
Intuit Programmer: "OK. We have written software that works on all possible platforms. It's all debugged and ready to go."
Intuit Business Guy: "Really? It runs perfectly on all platforms, and you're done with the whole debugging cycle? Didn't that cost a whole lot more than just writing code for the one platform that 99% of our users use?"
Intuit Programmer: "No. The magical code elves wrote all of the extra code for us. The code gnomes tested it. We paid them in fairy dust; no actual money involved."
Intuit Buisness Guy: "Hmmn
The question you should be asking is "how much of a business advantage would Intuit gain from investing the resources to develop this stuff for multiple platforms?" My guess is that it's just not worth it to them at this point. But who knows