In theory, this should be possible. I don’t think you need a .bat file. You could probably do this in Gramps itself (or maybe in the installer). However, there are still many things to do before then.
First, I want to implement major missing features, some of which will likely require significant code changes (I’ve been struggling with that for some time now). Once that is done, it must be tested and remaining bugs have to be fixed. If FTV should be the first view that new users see, the addon must be translated into all or almost all of the languages supported by Gramps.
Ultimately, the community needs to reach a consensus on this step. Many users prefer GraphView or other views, which should be considered.
If the buttons are the main reason to make FTV the first view a new user sees, then the buttons could also be added to any other view or a new Gramplet on the dashboard. Neither their appearance nor their functionality is linked to FamilyTreeView.
Thank you for this great plugin — it’s almost perfect for my use. I just have a small request for improvement regarding the display of multiple marriages: would it be possible for a person to be associated with their most recent spouse, rather than the first one, as shown in the attached images?
Check me on this… your logic for this suggestion might be described as: those other marriages terminated in divorce or widowing. So moving the spouses to the final marriage is more representive.
It might be more directly controllable to stay with the topmost marriage… since that is also what is used to divert pedigree evaluations. The topmost family is considered the primary.
I wonder (if this “final family” option was implemented) how it would choose to represent when the relationship wasn’t final for both spouses?
Thanks for your answer. I’m not an expert in genealogy, so I may be missing something. But just to clarify — it’s not about changing the logic of how Gramps handles family relationships in general, or how pedigree evaluations work.
My idea is more about improving the visual presentation in certain contexts — for example, when generating a diagram or chart centered on a specific individual.
In those cases, showing the most recent or current spouse (rather than the first one) would feel more natural and representative of real-life family structures, especially when prior relationships ended in divorce or death. This wouldn’t affect internal data structures or the general relationship logic — just how the family unit is displayed in a specific output.
Of course, I understand there could be edge cases (like asymmetric final relationships), but maybe this could be handled as an optional display setting?
To be brutally honest, having the topmost family diagrammed as the one containing the primary spouse is the the most consistently predictable visualization. It eliminates a huge number of edge cases.
“Topmost” perfectly handles the (now statistically less than 50٪ of) marriages that escape divorce. But the same could be said of diagramming for “last marriage”. So single marriages are a “wash” in this discussion.
Still, before divorce lost its stigma and spawned the acceptance of “starter marriages”, most 1st marriages birthed the bulk of offspring. (Although there were obviously a distressing number of 1st marriage where the bride was too young and died of birthing complications.) Topmost is the best default there too.
So “last marriage” has the most number of edge cases diagrams where rules would have created for automation.
But Gramps has the re-ordering interface for manually overiding the natural order. (The topmost family’s natural order is the 1st created order. By moving other families up or down in the list, it changes which Family is shown in most charts.
I’m glad that the addon is useful to you in its current non-final state.
I’ve just released an update (v0.1.165) that adds the “Main family to show:” option to the Appearance page. Provided that the family relationships are sorted chronologically, you should now be able to achieve what you want by selecting “Last”.
The new option applies to the root (active) person and their descendants. The index of this family in the family reference list of the spouse is not taken into account.
The new option is not relevant for ancestors. The “main” family which is shown for ancestors depends on the the order of the respective child’s parental families: The first / topmost parental family is used (this hasn’t changed with the latest update).
I just tried the option “last”— it works, the person is correctly associated with their last spouse, but the chronological order of the marriages is not respected in the chart. It seems I’m getting the same result as with the previous option by manually changing the marriage order, as suggested by emyoulation.
I think there would be many edge cases if the addon tried to reorder the families for display, e.g. when dealing with range dates for marriage or divorce events or families without any dates. The genealogist has to decide on an order and arrange the family references accordingly.
I’m not sure if I fully understand what you want to achieve. If my reply doesn’t answer your question, could you please provide more details about your desired visualization by comparing it to the current one with (edited) screenshots?
The person is correctly associated with their last spouse, but the marriages are not in the correct chronological order. (I get the same result with the “First” option by manually changing the order of the marriages.)
The marriages are displayed in chronological order, but the person is associated with their first spouse (which makes sense).
What I would like is a combination of both: marriages shown in chronological order, and the person associated with their last spouse (if that’s possible) :
Thanks for your explanation. Yes, now I see what you mean. The families are ordered like that because the alternative families expand to the side of the spouse of the main family: Alternative families of the father are displayed on the left and alternative families of the mother are displayed on the right. (A similar logic applies to siblings of ancestors.)
What you want is to move the alternative families of the mother to the father’s side (so that they appear in the correct order). While I could implement this, it would require some effort to change the code to allow this as an alternative. I’ll put it on my TODO list, but I’m not sure when I’ll find the time to implement it.
I also thought about this. I would like to wait until I’ve finished the next major update. I originally wanted to to complete the implementation a few months ago, but other obligations got in the way and I haven’t been able to work on this add-on as much as I did at the start of the year. Hopefully, I’ll have finished the remaining items within the next few weeks and will finally be able to publish it. That would be a good moment to start a new thread.
Thank you for your reply, I completely understand. Thanks again for the attention you’ve given to my request — I’ll keep using the plugin as it currently works; it’s already great as it is!
There a lot (a LOT) of interest in your FTV. And discussion with @Nick-Hall about the best way to mitigate the Requirements barrier. (Possibly bundling the GraphView support or rolling the addon into the core.)
Both of those options hold attractions. But unless Gramps also implements a “superseding” functionality for plug-ins, it might be better to publish through the main Addon Manager currated collection 1st. The general public is likely to shake out a few more issues that the power-user testers could just plow through.
For me, that triggered another idea. What if there could be an optional “as-of date” that would act as a filter (eliminating all of the people not yet born as of that date, and events that had not yet occurred), and showing other relationships as they were as of that date?
Probably there would be some difficulties with missing dates, but otherwise it might be a helpful way to visualize things as they were at a given point in time.
