Hi there! I’m new to Gramps so I’m sorry if this is kind of a dumb question, but I was looking to edit the graph view addon (if possible). I really like that view as it shows all siblings, half siblings, etc., but I don’t like the lines that connect the portraits, I was hoping to change them to something without the circles, but I don’t know how exactly to do that.
Welcome! The only stupid question is the one you don’t ask because of some discomfort.
Looked at the wiki docs for the add-on. It looks like there is no option to disable drawing of the Family Node ellipses. But there ARE three line type options: direct, curves, ortho.
It also appears that those ellipses are anchors for context menus. So removing them might not be wise. But you might disable drawing the marriage date and reduce the size dramatically.
Here’s where the section about the family node ellipses is in the addon source:
And your addons are installed in a plugins subfolder of your Gramps User Directory.
By the way, if you have installed the Plugin Manager Enhanced add-on, then you can use its Info feature to discover where the source code lives on your local drive.
Thank you so much for your response! I’ll give plugin manager enhanced a try and get back to you. Thank you again!
Great and hope the hacking works well for you. (Remember to delete the caching subfolder in same folder as the module you’re tweaking. It’ll be re-built from the current revision when the plug-ins are registered as Gramps restarts.)
Also, I see from your profile that you are on Windows 11. But it helps to know which version of Gramps you are using too. The User Directory moved from %AppData% to %localAppData% in a recent Gramps release.
Hello again! I’ve kind of changed my mind on how I want the lines to look. I’m hoping to get them to look something like the following:
(sorry for the bad drawing)
Do you think this will be possible? I know it’s a bit more complex than just making the circles smaller.
To begin with, I suggest that you install Inkscape and Graphviz. You can manually re-arrange diagrams while you’re working on code.
And you won’t have to apologize for your diagrams. 
Just an idea if you dont want the circles, but dont mind a gap in the lines, maybe making it transparent would work?
Right-click on a blank region of the Graph View. There will be an additional view option Line Types. The Ortho option will display the lines with right angles.
This will be closer to your desired output.
I just installed Graphviz and Inkscape, will this help me create the effect I’m looking for in Gramps? Sorry, I’ve never used these programs before, I don’t really know what they do and how it relates to Gramps, and I definitely have no idea what I’m doing.
When you print from the Graph View mode, choose to save to a .gv file. (The .svg option won’t include any thumbnail images but the wiki says that the Graph view format will.)
When you load the saved file in Graph View, you can drag to rearrange the elements in a way you find more pleasing.
As Dave suggested, the ‘orthogonal’ lines seem more close to what you request than the ‘direct’ lines. And scaling the elipses down to zero diameter may get you even closer.
Does dragging to rearrange the elements mean it will be like that for all future trees I make? I’m aware of ortho view, I just don’t like the way the lines are drawn and I want to change them. I don’t mind the ellipses, I think my main issue is that they are drawn below the portraits. I want my tree to look like the one I drew.
No. This is just a workaround. It just works better than a bitmap graphics editor since the line re-route as the ellipses are dragged.
Even if its not what OP want, I am interested, but I have not figured how to actually do this yet.
by “Opening in Graph view”, do you mean Graph Viz?
I dont think Inksape supports .gv files.
Yup. Sorry
Use Inkscape for tweaking .svg output.
One of the points that the many posts for @StoltHD underline is that using Gramps with a well-stocked digital toolbox is the key to professional quality results.
Gramps is excellent for collation of data, trimming datasets for use with other tools, and generating rough charts.
But reports & graphs from Gramps need to be tweaked before they are suitable as Illustrations for a research paper. The raw output is roughly arranged that needs to be fine-tuned, it lacks titles, color/dataset keys, and captions. All that needs to be built elsewhere.
It doesn’t make sense for Gramps to try to compete with those specialized tools. They are too far ahead and playing catchup would steal resources from core feature development.
But improving the pipeline (by expanding the API hooks and reducing the steps needed to pipe the data) between Gramps and complementary tools is a force multiplier.
I managed to get an SVG, but I hoped I could move the boxes around and them staying connected with the connector, but doesnt seem like it, unless I have missed something.
Unless you have to do something spesific like changing some setting, it seems like the output SVG is basically the same with images as the one Graph View creates when using print in that: Both show the people images when viewing it in browser, but in inkscape, both show red X on the images.
I think its because it uses path links to images for where they are stored, and Inkscape doest support the exact type of links used. (They are absolute links but I dont think thats why)
I was hopeful for a little moment, but I guess it wasnt as I had hoped.
I hoped I could just have something look exactly like Graphs View, but rearrange by only dragging the squares and connections follow.
Save in .gv format for that ability to move boxes around while stretching their connectors simultaneously.
The .svg is just 1 step above bitmaps. You have to reshape each element individually.
I tried finding an editor that could do that with .gv files, that arent command line or text editor, so I have given up,
In Inkscape, you can select objects and then right-click on them to group them together. The same to ungroup them. There is also a Group to layer option to keep objects stacked together.
