Gramps 6.0 Media Object Editor will validate URLs for the paths of Media.
Previous versions have allowed importing of URLs as Media paths but the Media Object Editor refused to validate. So Editing the Media attributes was impossible until downloading the remote media and re-linking to the local file. And trying to follow a URL media object in 5.2 gave an error:
Here are preliminary results when exercising the new feature in 6.0 beta2:
I added a new media object. The Gtk File Chooser dialog appears for local files. (No indication of how to add a remote file.)
After dismissing the File Chooser, the Media Object Editor appears. You can paste the URL into the Path.
(I used https://gramps-project.org/wiki/images/2/27/MainWindow-PeopleCategory-PeopleTreeView-annotated-50.png )
No Preview appears and the Preview’s Placeholder icon is unrecognizably TINY
For quick sample to test 5.2 behaviors, paste .xml file into Import Text gramplet:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE database PUBLIC "-//Gramps//DTD Gramps XML 1.7.1//EN"
"http://gramps-project.org/xml/1.7.1/grampsxml.dtd">
<database xmlns="http://gramps-project.org/xml/1.7.1/">
<header>
<created date="2025-03-02" version="5.2.4"/>
</header>
<objects>
<object handle="_fd56b651d752a7c39d6a5c68d89" change="1740930423" id="O0000">
<file src="https://gramps-project.org/wiki/images/2/27/MainWindow-PeopleCategory-PeopleTreeView-annotated-50.png" mime="application/http" description="Gramps 5.0 annotated main window"/>
<dateval val="2017-12-24"/>
</object>
</objects>
<notes>
<note handle="_fd56ba4047d14fc2dea2c2577c7" change="1740930836" id="N0000" type="To Do">
<text>What are the main windows parts of the Gramps interface</text>
<style name="link" value="gramps://Media/handle/fd56b651d752a7c39d6a5c68d89">
<range start="13" end="55"/>
</style>
</note>
</notes>
</database>
The “gramps-url” icon will be displayed for external media if no thumbnailer is present. I would welcome anyone who is good at designing icons to provide something better. We are always looking for volunteers to improve the Gramps artwork.
If you would like to test an experimental thumbnailer plugin for external media then let me know details of your operating system and web browser.
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Is that a scalable SVG? Could the default just be a 48x48 instead of a 16x16
My testbox is a Win10pro 19045.5487 with Microsoft Edge (by factory default) and Firefox 135.0.1
By the way, regarding that oddly named default folder when adding media… a search for: .dbus-keyrings folder on windows 10
Reddit r/techsupport 21 Oct 2021 by u/t0m5k1
You must have an application that’s built for linux (and ported to windows) or you have WSL [Windows Subsystem for Linux] installed and something in that created it.
Given the freeze of 6.0, perhaps the external media thumbnailer plugin (or an upgrade to Thumbnail Generator addon tool) could wait until after release?
Just upscaling the size of the gramps-url in the Preview would be sufficient for now.
And maybe telling us how to find an icon in the various OS installations would allow Artwork volunteers to experiment? Additionally, where can they effectively contribute artwork for specific targets? The artwork submissions in MantisBT for improved map pins and some icons haven’t been adopted. They need a developer as an advocate to make headway.
Yes. That’s why I made the thumbnailer a third-party addon rather than part of core Gramps.
I don’t mind letting people have the code if they would like to help with testing and development.
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The thumbnailer uses selenium to run a web browser in headless mode. I just tried to build a Windows AIO with selenium and it failed.
I’m not going to be able to progress this any further on Windows without some help.
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Update: I have now managed to build a Windows AIO that includes selenium. It needed the package python-cffi installed in order to compile.
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With Selenium installed, the console reports a scary DevTools listening on ws:\\127.0.0.1:58507 message.
It makes Gramps look like Big Brother. Can this message be eliminated? Or is there an alternative to Selenium?
(Found https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man1/webkit-image-gtk.1.html for ubuntu)
Using Webkit would obviously be easier than using selenium. The geography views used it in v3.2.
Webkit is much larger than selenium, which is one of the reasons we moved to osmgpsmap. We could use it for other purposes as well, such as rendering markdown in notes.
Selenium’s 2 Megabytes vs Webkit’s 18 Gigabytes! Wow 
But the Selenium message makes Gramps look like Spyware. That would haunt us for years. Unless that message can be eliminated, bundling Selenium doesn’t seem like it is worth the drawback.
Browser Drivers for Selenium
- ChromeDriver (for Google Chrome); Size: ~7.2 MB to 9.6 MB
- GeckoDriver (for Mozilla Firefox); Size: ~7.0 MB to 7.2 MB
- EdgeDriver (for Microsoft Edge); Size: ~10.0 MB to 15.6 MB
- IEDriverServer (for Internet Explorer); Size: ~1.2 MB to 1.7 MB
- SafariDriver (for Apple Safari); Size: Built in, no download required
It’s important to note that these sizes can vary slightly between versions. The Selenium package itself is relatively small, with the core package sizes ranging from 1.0 MB to 1.9 MB.
Yes, I think that selenium added about 3MB to the Windows AIO. Webkit is large, but not as big as 18GB. The download is about 32MB on my system, but there are probably some dependencies.
Perhaps selenium should be an addon instead of bundled? Even though that would make the webpage thumbnailer have a “Requires” and need to be an addon too?
Selenium isn’t a pure python package, so we would need to include it in the Windows AIO.
This was only an experimental thumbnailer addon. I haven’t even published it in the addons repository yet.
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Ah… misread the “compilation process for WebKitGTK can be resource-intensive, requiring at least 18 gigabytes of disk space”
