A
reddit/r/genealogyforum posting asked whether Geneanet or Gramps is better for building family trees. My feeling is there is not a choice of one over the other. It is using the best tool for the task of the moment.What follow was my response. What other approaches did I skip? (Or gloss over?)
There are a multitude of ways to create Tree data in Gramps. However, it takes exploration to discover which method suits you best. The default is with the “Add” menus that offer input dialogs.
(I find it easier to start with the “Add” by adding a “Family”, then adding family members within the Edit Family. That is a top-down approach. If you start with a Person or a Note or an Event or a Source, then you have to wrap objects around the starting point. That is a bottom-up approach.)
You can use a Chart view to build-out relationships. But that requires creating a Person and selecting them as a starting point for the Chart.
You can start with a family group photo, tag faces and add Person data for each face.
You can import a GEDCOM or a CSV/spreadsheet table of data. You can use a “Data Entry form” gramplet to input vital statistics.
You could enter data in the familiar environment of your smart phone’s contact then export the vCards into Gramps and stitch the contacts together. (Most people already have their close relative in their contacts.
There are a multitude of other formats supported for importing besides GEDCOM, Gramps XML, CSV or vCard : such as GeneWeb, Pro-Gen, JSON, SQLite, GeneaNet’s gwplus.
New features due this October include a PDF form-based importer and expansions to the CSV options. And an interactive data ecxhange FamilySearch portal.
Finally, there is a full Geneanet import/export too. So you don’t have choose one or the other. (Gramps considers itself to be a ‘tool in the toolbox’ and doesn’t demand users choose it over other options. Use it where it helps you.)