At the other end, there are a number of accounting systems that are based on plain-text files and an associated set of programs. These systems are much easier to work with [than the non-GnuCash GUI tools evaluated] and are adaptable to most needs. Such a system could have been made to work for LWN, but they tend to lack some useful features. Check writing and report generation, for example, tend not to be well supported. The user interface for many operations is a text editor; this is often seen as an advantage, but it becomes less so as the number of transactions grows. There are advantages to a graphical interface designed for the job at hand.
> Maybe this was primarily done based on the users being comfortable with a GUI driven system?
FWIW I started prototyping a plaintext accounting 'app' that combines a popular plaintext accounting system (beancount) with the most used web frontend for it (fava) - it's called beancolage and makes use of eclipse theia (vscode-like experience): https://github.com/seltzered/beancolage
My observation is the plaintext accounting ecosystem is wonderful but a bit diffuse to so many specific usecases held by a more technical userbase. My aim for prototyping beancolage was to ask how things could look if there was a more common 'download and try' experience accessible to more people for basic workflows. Also have a talk on the motivations here: https://youtu.be/mxgoFqmSCFc
I used Ledger to manage the accounting for a small nonprofit. It worked for me, but I was the Treasurer and the only person managing the books. Multiuser would have required git or something similar to handle the updates and possible conflicts. That's all stuff I'm comfortable with as a developer but a complete non-starter for anyone else. These issues would quickly make text-file accounting infeasible for larger organizations.
When I moved out of that role, the next Treasurer wanted to use Quickbooks so I had to help import the data. That's another problem with using obscure software -- it's more difficult to hand it off to someone else who only knows the mainstream systems.
https://plaintextaccounting.org
Maybe this was primarily done based on the users being comfortable with a GUI driven system?