Hallo.
More than 90% of the time the laptop I am using is not connected to the internet.
I have installed Gramps successfully but I feel my stress levels elevate when I click on the Help menu then choose Get Help.
Is an offline manual available, so I can learn Gramps offline? I know that the Gramps developers don’t get feedback on what people are looking up when using an offline manual, but I think it would be extremely helpful for people who work offline to have the choice to…learn Gramps offline.
The last downloadable manual was produced in 2012 for 3.3 version of Gramps. [5.1.6 version generated 27 Aug 2023] That was when the tools broke that were used to produce such an artifact.
Although not a feature within Gramps or its addons, you might want to note that there are a number of tools which clone a website for offline use.
And you would not need the ENTIRE website with its thousands of pages. There are only a couple dozen pages in the core wiki. A few dozen more if you want the pages for each add-on.
A sufficiently motivated person could probably adapt a caching script from some of the wiki user manual’s version rollover process.
Hi Guys
I tried httrack https://www.httrack.com/ (under Linux) 3 times It has failed me every time, despite trying to change settings. I get the main Gramps index page downloaded and then go to click on a link and get a missing page. I also get httrack stop things midwawy, having to resume the website download, and it still fails me.
I either need the correct settings to download things successfully in httrack, or I could just do with the files from someone who has done it already (and maybe zipped them up).
Has anyone tried and done it already? Or if possible, just share how to do it?
If it was quick and easy, someone would have been a downloadable ZIP sometime in the last 10 years. (Since the previous method broke.)
In all that time, no one has volunteered to put in such an effort rather than just use a 'net connection.
There have been some recent conversations about finding a different too to build a PDF from website tool and make that a new download. No progress to report yet.
I need to learn more about the technical side of things. LibreOffice always has offline help available https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/ I don’t know about the technical details of what they are using, but I am interested to learn how they do it.
I would love to get something done for offline use but I have only ‘regular user’ knowledge about how it’s done.
After taking a brief look at the Gramps wiki, I gather that in older versions documentation might have been offline from which manuals were generated. At some point documentation was moved to a wiki and it had been possible to generate a PDF from it, but the process no longer works. Can someone confirm all this?
There was a discussion started on the GRAMPS for Genealogists group on Facebook looking for a volunteer to take up the creation of a PDF from the MediaWiki. (The Facebook group exibits little tolerance for code development or even add-on installation. So I hoped we might cultivate some volunteer activity on the documentation side. We found an artist and a translator in the past there.)
Pediapress.com seemed to be a match for the technical issues related to converting a set of MediaWiki pages. But their company seems to be less & less active.
The MediaWiki site has a list of PDF export extensions. We appear to have used the first two approaches in the past. The workflow for 3.3 may actually still work, maybe using Pediapress rather than Prince. Someone would have to try.
Alternatively someone may want to investigate one of the other approaches.
If anyone is interested then let me know. We will probably have to install some MediaWiki extensions.
Gary has also added a wiki page about creating these offline manual files. It describes the workflow for using the template Scripts to generate an offline 5.1.x HTML manual and converting that to a nicely cross-referenced PDF.
Separate script templates are included for creating the offline manual in 4 languages. Translators are encouraged to adapt the scripts for building offline manuals in their own language. New translations can be linked to the User Manual Translations page.
I found a weird error in the Dutch one. The on-line version has a chapter named Gebruikersmap, which is the proper translation for user('s) folder, but the PDF says Gebruikersnaam, which means user name. The PDF also has an English glossary at the end, which doesn’t show in the on-line version.
We didn’t (and won’t) have an Index. The hotlinked glossary provided a similar navigation functionality. So Gary was kind enough to append it in the 5.1 PDFs.
Note that, like I wrote on FB Messenger, I see no way to change that page title. It says Gebruikersmap in the contents/index, but the page itself says Gebruikersnaam, on-line and off-line.
I have admin rights on the wiki, but the 5.1 page is protected, and I see no way to change the ttile of the 5.2 page, which doesn’t even have that wrong term in its source code.
Does this mean that there is some automated translation, triggered by the macro that defines the page title or something?
Well, to be honest, as a user, and reader, for which you asked for my help, I don’t care about the English version, at least not when I play the role of a Dutch speaking visitor.
I see 5 appendices, not 7, so that Appendix G isn’t there, and neither is F. And I still have a problem with Appendix D, which has the proper title in the TOC, but not on the page itself.
P.S. I mixed up index and Tabel Of Contents, and meant the latter.
The offline manual script builds a custom Table of Contents since the online version has too many levels to render cleanly. Since the
So the NL script apparently needs a revision.
If the page itself needs a naming refinement, experiments in that should probably be done in the 5.2 version before the corresponding version of Gramps goes public. Renaming a page can be complex. Lots of re-directs to be rectified to do that cleanly. And the translate page names already have an english version re-direct.
Let me try to address the NL issues you mentioned.
Gebruikersmap vs Gebruikersnaam: The online manual ToC lists Gebruikersmap. This is a redirect. When I generate the offline manual, I ignore all ToC content and recreate from the H1 and H2 content of the pages. So to fix. you would have to rename the page and change all references for Nl:Gramps 5.1 Wiki Handleiding - Gebruikersnaam - Gramps . You would also need the page H1 to use the new name. Once renamed, it would be reflected in both the regenerated offline ToC and the chapter and footer.
Appendices: The offline manual has the same as the online but adds the Glossary to the bottom. The EN manual has an App E: Errors and Warnings. This is not in the NL version (neither online nor offline).
My intention is to reproduce the online version. Any errors that are in the online are also in the offline. Since 5.1 manual is locked at this point, any errors that need to be fixed need to be manually done in the script.
I could manually fix in the 5.1 offline NL manual and regenerate if you think this is important.
I can generate a 5.2 manual (the scripts to do yourself are at Manual Generation 5.1 - Gramps if you have command-line tools like sed and Make available on your system) if you have made changes there and want to verify they function.