Display Gramps Places in 'relative' terms of Here, Now & Who

Ideas
1

When writing biographical or historical articles, most are couched in relative terms… dates are relative to the date of publication, familiar nearby places are less explicit than faraway places, and people are referenced in terms of their relationship to the subject or author.

It would be nice if Gramps could do something similar.

Most of us have a region of interest where a large percentage of their research is focused. Mine is in my home township, county, state, nation, continent, planet, solar system, spiral arm & galaxy. When I reference places, they are going to be in those terms. So it would be nice to be able to define a “Home” place where the the Place display omits any part of the Place hierarchy (after the most highly defined) that overlaps my Home Place. (Perhaps putting in a placeholder house ⌂ Unicode character with a rollover hint of my Home Place.)

So, if my Home Place is: “Hickory township, Lawrence county, Pennsylvania, United States, North America, Terra, Sol system, Orion–Cygnus Arm, Milky Way”; then “Neshannock Presbyterian Cemetery, Wilmington township, Lawrence county, Pennsylvania, United States, North America, Terra, Sol system, Orion–Cygnus Arm, Milky Way” would display as “Neshannock Presbyterian Cemetery, Wilmington township, ⌂”. Anything more would be monotonous.

A similar thing happens in obits. Those are written of today, and a local “dearly departed”. So references of next Tuesday, and brothers “Tom, Dick & Harry of Pittsburgh” is sufficient to derive an exact date, the surnames & the State/Nation. And if the genealogist fails to embed the newspaper publication place, publ date & decedent; then the information becomes unresolvable.

See also: Allow user format option by DaveSch-gramps · Pull Request #1609 · gramps-project/gramps · GitHub

3 Likes
2

I don’t see a problem with introducing the concept of a home place.

1 Like
3

Maybe the Object Selectors could take advantage of the Home (or Active) object too? Since Gramps already keeps track of the Active Record in each category.

So if Gramps had Citation 00135 as the Active Record in Citations and the “Add an existing Citation or Source” was clicked, the Citation Selector would open scrolled to that Citation.

It could be a way to shortcut data entry.

4

The dates editor brings up a date range/span oriented selector:

But for orientation purposes, a calendar would be more informative.

1134×832 67.6 KB

Or for a Place, a pinned Geography view (like all known places or Places related to events)
911×647 308 KB

Or for a person, an immeduate family chart
1006×700 117 KB

5

Added Feature Request:
0013159 Add a “Home Place” preference for simplified Place Titles
(Interface, feature 2024-01-28 )