Today I notice a new behavior in Gramps. When working with any field that has a drop-down list, the type-ahead to search feature no longer works. I see this in the Attribute tab and also the Internet tab when adding a new item of either type. It is seriously slowing down my work.
Clicking the down-arrow brings up the full list. Once I find the item I want, clicking on it will choose it. However, those lists are not sequenced and (even worse!) come up with a different sequence at every invocation.
I cannot find any setting either in Gramps or in Fedora system settings to change this behavior. I suspect it is really a GTK setting, but I could not find anything relevant by searching.
Start typing in any drop-down and this will display all types, coded and custom starting with that letter and will further filter as more letters are typed.
It was working like that just a week ago. I have not applied any
changes - not even a machine reboot.
Recalling the old behavior - In an Internet dropdown, if I typed exactly
two characters then it would find a match. Type a third and no matches
would be found even if one existed. The attributes dropdown did not do
that.
You could try the Rebuild Secondary Indexes tool. I have no idea if dropdown lists are rebuilt or not. The documentation is lacking in specifics beyond gender and names.
Or make sure you have the current backup .gramps file and do an import into a new, empty database.
A third option is run Check and Repair. Every user should run CR every so often even if you are not experiencing any issues. I try to remember to run it every 6-8 months.
Since you indicate that this is a change in behavior, it is not a result of a bug in the code.
The plot thickens … I am not convinced this is a Gramps problem even
though - so far - that is the only place I see it.
I did “check and repair” on the database. I did “rebuild secondary
indexes”. The problem still existed. I created a new database and
imported the current backup. Problem still existed.
Then I discovered a new wrinkle! This is odd … If I start typing in
a dropdown list, it does not display any entry. BUT! If I type two or
three characters and ==> then hit backspace once <==, the matching
entries show up! If I continue typing characters, it continues to
narrow down the choices.
The next time I open a dropdown list, the action has to be repeated.
Also, hitting backspace as the first typed character does not work.