Hi all,
i’ve looked into the form gramplet and understood it so far.
But I still have one question in my head. Is it possible to assign the data directly to an event so that it isn’t just listed under attributes? Could I change the xml file?
Then I could enter the baptisms from a church register directly there. Also the marriages and funerals.
I am on Win11 and Gramps 5.2.3
1 Like
Hi Stefan
As a long term user and tweaker of Forms can I give my (possibly to be corrected by wiser heads) view
By .xml I am assuming you are meaning the likes of the custom.xml file
Which is essentially a slightly modifiable template allowing data entry in a standard format into the main database. It does not in anyway store your data (a mixture of human readable and data blobs).
Baptisms, Marriages and Burials I have found a particular problem in that you cannot attach Notes and any Media you attach via the Form does not appear when you go to the Individuals Event View and look at the Gallery you have to go via the Form which is not always convenient.
There is a member of this email group trying to develop improvements
worth a look
[Gramps] [Development] Plans to Update Forms Addon Over the 2024 Summer by Renee Schmidt
phil
2 Likes
Hi Phil,
I read the thread and am excited to see when it is finished.
Perhaps it will be possible to write data about it into the main database.
Stefan
In that thread reply, there are links to several Forms enhancements that seem to be stagnating in various development phases.
The one by stevenyoungs ( Form Gramplet: per Form, per Column actions[v52] #267) is about a context menu feature when displaying Form data. It adds an option to generate an Event based on the form. The specific example was pre-populating a new Event with: type Occupation, a description, the date, linked to a Person and having a Citation to the form data.
The user then has the option of accepting the Event or refining the data.
Similar features for shared Events (like a Residence) could be used in combination with the experimental Recent items selector enhancement by @kku for quick sharing of events across a household.
1 Like
Yes, that’s more or less what I’m looking for. But it would be too much work to transfer each event individually. I know that the form gramplet is about evidence data that shouldn’t be changed so easily - it’s also about reading the text.
I tried to use the gramplet to copy church records. They always follow the same pattern.
That would be an easier way to enter them directly into Gramps.
I’m currently entering church records (baptisms, weddings and funerals) for a location in Excel. I use “GedTool” to process these into a Gedcom and then wanted to import them. Unfortunately, this failed because of Gramps’ Gedcom import.
Hence the attempt with the form gramplet…
These sort of things are evolutions.
For instance, the form might next evolve to have an indicator of which field do NOT yet have a structured record associated with the Form data… rather like a Hint “leaves” feature.
Subsequently, a feature might be created to gather all the form’s hint leaves into a selection list where you can mass accept those hints.
1 Like
Sounds exciting. If only I had learned programming 30 years ago… 
1 Like
Like I wish that I had kept taking programming in college classes 40 years ago. Alas, everything after Fortran IV was self-paced. And it turns out that I’m lazy.
1 Like
When I was at school in the 1980s, this wasn’t even offered in Germany.
1 Like
#267 is marked as a draft with a “work in progress” label. I assume that it will be superseded by the changes that @RenTheRoot is currently working on.
#265 looks OK to me and can probably merged, but I’ll leave that decision to Renée. She may wish to implement it differently.
#312, #542 and #546 relate to US form definitions. Back in December 2016 I delegated the responsibility for adding and updating definitions to country-specific maintainers. See the Form Addon thread on the gramps-users mailing list. As far as I remember CurtD is the maintainer for US definitions. Maybe we should check that the maintainers are still active and ask for more volunteers to help out if required.
2 Likes
#267 looks intriguing. But rather than a Context menu, visible indicators would move it from an Easter Egg to an intuitive feature.
For instance, feedback (like the styling for an invalid date being entered) might indicate that an object didn’t exist. Clicking could do the New Object pre-fill. And the new Object dialog could have a Share button that did a fuzzy search for an existing record similar to the pre-fill data.
Further, like the Object Editor tabs, form fields already associated with a Record could have the primary object icon associated with it. Or to be more space efficient, maybe the text could just have the hotlink stylings (color & underline).
1 Like
I can confirm this will be possible using “form templates” in my updates to the form gramplet. You make a template that tells gramps what fields in a form should link to what events.
2 Likes
OK, that sounds great. So the form goes directly into the main Gramps database. So I can assign a field to each column for the events in Gramps. Great
Sometimes there are many columns. Here is an excerpt from my Excel spreadsheet that I use to collect data.
It´s in German 
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.