I am glad that that the Gramplets view (introduced in version 3.0) evolved into View sidebar & bottombar split screens in version 3.3. But, in some ways, this massive improvement orphaned the newly rechristened Dashboard view. Its purpose became less obvious.
Perhaps Gramplet layouts oriented around a purpose could be saved & swapped as needed:
a ‘Welcome’ layout, a Database status layout, a Tree diagnostic layout, a session management layout, et cetera ad nauseam.
The Dashboard might be re-invigorated by giving it these variations of Modes. (The multiple named Configurations could be saved as Modes.)
Maybe the another pop-up contextual menu option (after the ‘Restore a Gramplet’) could be ‘Restore a layout’? Or options could be added to the ‘Layout’ tab of the Config for Saving, selecting, Renaming & Deleting a named layout? With the initial layout being named “Getting Started” And all that does is swap named variations of the Gramplets_dashboardview_gramplets.ini file in the Gramps51 sub-folder of the User Directory
However, to avoid the agony that we have in sharing Custom Filter definitions, perhaps the interface could allow each Named Gramplets_dashboardview_gramplets.ini chunk to be shown as a Copy & Paste text chunk in the GUI? Then I could copy a Dashboard configuration shared in this forum and paste it for use in my Gramps.
(And maybe in the future, since Gramps installs with a huge set of icons in the Adwaita theme, perhaps the Mode icon for the Toolbar could be selectable? Perhaps from a Media Preview style window that shows thumbnails of all the icon subfolders in the appropriately-sized-for-the-toolbar found in C:\Program Files\GrampsAIO64-5.1.3\share\icons\Adwaita\)
As an example, the following Gramplets_dashboardview_gramplets.ini is somewhat useful for managing your session:
;; Gramps gramplets file
;; Automatically created at 2021/03/03 09:17:25
[Gramplet View Options]
column_count=3
pane_position=-1
pane_orientation=horizontal
[To Do]
name=To Do
height=300
expand=True
title=To Do-1
detached_width=400
detached_height=300
state=maximized
page=0
help_url=None
navtypes=['Dashboard']
column=0
row=0
[Latest Changes]
name=LastChangeGramplet
height=175
expand=False
title=Latest Changes
detached_width=400
detached_height=300
state=maximized
page=0
help_url=LastChange
navtypes=[]
column=1
row=0
[What's Next?]
name=What's Next
height=230
expand=True
title=What's Next?
detached_width=400
detached_height=300
state=maximized
page=0
help_url=None
navtypes=[]
column=1
row=1
[Session Log]
name=Session Log
height=230
expand=True
title=Session Log
detached_width=400
detached_height=300
state=maximized
page=0
help_url=None
navtypes=[]
column=2
row=0
The default is:
;; Gramps gramplets file
;; Automatically created at 2021/03/03 09:22:19
[Gramplet View Options]
column_count=2
pane_position=-1
pane_orientation=horizontal
[Top Surnames]
name=Top Surnames
height=230
expand=False
title=Top Surnames
detached_width=400
detached_height=300
state=maximized
page=0
data[0]=10
help_url=None
navtypes=[]
column=0
row=0
[Welcome to Gramps!]
name=Welcome
height=300
expand=True
title=Welcome to Gramps!
detached_width=400
detached_height=300
state=maximized
page=0
help_url=None
navtypes=[]
column=1
row=0
