I hesitate to offer this… it is potentially dangerous.
But I’ve stored a few more esoteric items as Private Notes within the Tree. (This isn’t the dangerous bit.)
As background, let’s say I’m going to generate a family branch website or collate book for publication from Gramps. At that point, I’m probably going to export a filtered set of data to a new Tree. That creates something that can be inspected to make certain Private data doesn’t get published. It can also be archived as a fixed point of reference… or published on the website as a downloadable shared Tree.
So that this style of website or book can be re-generated from the full Tree, I’ll store Private ToDoNotes under the central figure of the report. That’s usually the Home Person.
This includes:
- the contents of the custom_filter.xml with a notation of which filter was applied for the export.
- the contents of the books.xml so the style of the book or website can be matched
- the ID format section of the gramps.ini so I am reminded to reconfigure Preferences to follow the same GrampsID pattern.
That part isn’t dangerous either… merely unrealistically optimistic. What are the chances of me remembering these Notes are there 10 years later?
But here’s the tricky part…
I set up those 3 Gramps working files as objects in the Media View. From there, I can pop them open in a text editor for inspection or copying into a Note. Of course, while they’re open for viewing by an external program, Gramps can’t update them and might crater if it tries.
Gramps fights allowing them to be Media objects. In the Windows version, you can’t browse to Media objects in hidden folders. Nor can you type in a path that can’t be browsed. But… you can edit a Media object to paste in a different path and filename. So I create a dummy Media object and paste in the fully qualified path.
Likewise, I’ve found it enlightening to inspect the add-ons list file occasionally. So that is my 4th faux Media object in my Tree.