Win 11 Home
AIO64-6.0.8–1
I’m an absolute beginner to Gramps. I like that it’s free and powerful. But to me, it’s not an intuitive interface. I’ve been working on my family history for a while now and I’d like to make this tool the home for the info I’ve collected. I just have some rookie questions. If anyone is good at dealing with newbies, please don’t hesitate to reply.
Hi
Just ask your questions you will be amazed at the number of people who
will reply
phil
Start by exploring each of the categories in detail. The help pages are quite helpful.
You will need to develop your own workflow and then stay with it for consistency. Just a couple of tips: most events you create should have a citation attached so study that function well, for each Place you create add the LAT/LONG to the record because it is required by the mapping function.
Good luck with your research.
There’s an add-on called FamilyTreeView or FTV for short. It gives you a very intuitive graphical interface.
Unfortunately it’s not officially released as an add-on, so there’s a few steps to install it.
FTV has a huge amount of configuration options, so spend a little time on this, so FTV will behave just as you want.
You can flatten that steep learning curve by watch some of the tutorial videos created by users.
The Gramps version 6.2 in development (following 6.1 with a FamilySearch portal… currently in alpha test) has an enormous number of changes that improve the UX (user experience) in Gramps.
There are many improvements for the novice onboarding and smoothing workflows for power users.
Thanks @Davesellers for your good wishes. And thanks to @comeng for your encouragement to just ask questions! Alright, so I’m going to try inputting some quite basic info into the system. Here I go. I’ll just ask about whatever’s unclear. Perhaps this could help people working on this project:
One of my ancestor’s names is Modesto de Cortabitarte e Ibanez de Aldecoa. Modesto is a given name, de is a prefix to a surname, e is a connector, Ibanez is another surname, and Aldecoa is a surname. If someone could provide guidance on entering this, that would be great.
Call is used for a person who uses a middle name in everyday life.
In the Prefereces Data tab you can set up how you want names to be displayed.
One of the options is Common instead of Given. When Common is used, Gramps will first use the Call name if it exists, secondly, the Nickname if it exists, and lastly the first of the Given names.
Yes to first and all middles names are entered as the Given name.
Suffix is not part of the Given name but for Junior or III, or educational degrees, Ph.D., etc.
That is WAY too many questions in a single posting. You will get better quality answers faster if there is one topic per posting.
So many questions at once slows the response. When people do not see a quick correct response or something where they have expertise, they start working on responding. So a multiple question postings distributes the work across multiple people less efficiently. And you don’t get timely responses.
- Call name
introduction to Names in Gramps. Gramps does not separate Given names into “First” and “Middle” because many cultures have many Given names. So this says which of the Given Names one is “Called” by. (The implicit is the First name in the list. So you only ought to specify if they are called by one of the other names.) Example “Stuart James Little, Jr.” is called “James” and his nickname is “Jim”. If he was call by Stuart, the Call is left blank and the nickname might be “Stu” or “Art”
All given names are entered in the same box. (e.g. Given: “Sarah Maria Evelyn Petunia”, Call: “Evelyn”, Nick: “Eve”). Suffix examples: “Jr.”, “Esq.”, “IV”, “PhD”
Name Editor vs. Person Editor. The Person Editor has collapsed/de-cluttered data entry interface. It hides fields that tend to be needed infrequently. The Name Editor gives access to all the advanced options.
- surname prefix.
Prefix can be used for Title, Rank, Honorifics, nobility, etc. (That is Title info, not Prefix.)
Prefix is for cultural words that qualify a surname. Such as like : of (de, von, van, van der), relationship ( Ibn , Bin , Ben , Abu , Nic , Ní , Ap , P ), house/family (El , Al), et cetera.
- There’s a name editor to the right and a multiple surname option.
The Name Editor gives access to all the advanced options and needs to open another dialog. The Multiple Surnames is often the only additional part needed from those advanced options … so it simply expands the Edit Person dialog.
ID in an textbox entry field in the Event Reference Editor is for the Event. So looking at the titlebar for the Object Editor dialog indicates the object being ID’d. (Blank ID fields are auto-populated when you click OK. Only enter an ID manually if you want to override.)
Place names are hierarchical. See the Places term in the Gramps Glossary
- about something that I don’t get
What is the message?
- So how can I have one mother with both names stored, and indicate my preference as to which is preferred?
Most people will have only a single preferred name, no alternative names. So the Edit Person dialog was designed to make editing those field more accessible than opening the more extensive Edit Name dialog. If you want additional names, select the “Names” tab at the bottom of the Edit Person dialog. After Adding alternative names, you can change the Preferred name via drag’n’drop. Dropping an alternative name in the Preferred name spot will demote the original Preferred name to be an alternative.
- would I put these in the source citations section for a person, or notes, or what?
Make your own policy for how you do Citations and then be consistent. Some people source every data element. Some people decide a source would be listed too repetitively if most (or all) the elements below use that source. So they attach the source higher.
I believe the Common fallback priority is : Nickname, Call, first word in Given
Places is really where you need to think as a database administrator - if you know anything about relational database normalisation, you should find it easy. If not …
A top down view would look like
USA is divided into 50 states
Each state is divided into a number of counties
Each county is divided into a number of municipalities
etc.
If you turn it around you have the way Gramps does this:
A parish is surrounded by a municipality
A municipality is surrounded by a county
A county is surrounded by a state
A state is surrounded by USA
So to create “Richmond, Virginia, USA” you should first create “USA” as a country
Then create “Virginia” as a state surrounded by USA
Then create Richmond as a county surrounded by Virginia
Then create Richmond as a city surrounded by Richmond county
There might be databases from where you can import these data into Gramps, but I’m not in the USA, my knowledge is quite limited on the specific USA data.
I stand corrected! It is Nickname, Call then first word (usually a name) of the Given.
In another thread about frustrations (perhaps the wrong thread), I posted that I was writing a long document regarding my frustrations beginning to use GRAMPS. Now that a new version, 6.2.0, with major revision of the user interface is already in beta-testing, I will put that document aside, and only mention a few items here.
Gramps 6.0.8, Windows 11
After the first installation, the first execution of Gramps brings up a big black screen which looks like a DOS window. Then Gramps opens, but the big black screen stays until Gramps is closed.
After an uninstall and reinstall, the DOS-like screen does not appear. A sign that the uninstall left something behind. Indeed, when starting over - uninstall / reinstall - and beginning a new Family Tree, GRAMPS “knew” the folder in which to store the Tree (er, database) from previous use of Preferences. [The uninstall / reinstall was done so that I could document my user steps - and failures - in detail.]
When the DashBoard initially opens, there appears to be a useful text panel on the right. But the slider does NOT work. (Yes, I know that is because a modal window has also opened.)
The process of entering an initial Family Tree name and then requiring one to LOAD a Family Tree is weird: I don’t want to load a Tree; I don’t have one to Load; I have just started one. (I want to Load / Populate my new Tree with data.)
The (fundamental) Person Entry window: Some entry boxes have proper labels; some have pre-filled data meant as labels; and the totally unlabeled one is for the Surname!
I’ll stop here, except to say that the emphasis on (first) entering “sources” is good advice once a user has some “feel” for Person / Family / Relationship data entry, compounded with Gramps’ use of “Sources” as the name of the middle layer of the fairly complex Repositories / Sources / Citations concept.
[Allow me: I’m rather familiar with the Relational Model, Windows XX, GUI design, genealogy concepts, etc. But (so far) know very little about Gramps, though I have read many pages of the documentation, and use google searches for specific items.]
Yes, the option to launch Gramps after the installation finishes uses a different option for launching. It launches the Gramps console … which shows more detailed diagnostic information than the GUI. But it also has the drawback that that console is the “parent” of the Gramps GUI. So if you force close the console, Gramps dies with it.
However, in subsequent launches, users tend to choose the Gramps application icon that does NOT say ‘console’. (Its parent is the Windows desktop. But since Windows desktop is always running, you don’t notice that the Gramps thread is tied there.) And yes, the User Directory is NOT flushed with an uninstall of the Application. Doing so would be dangerous… since many people have their research stored as a database tree within that User Directory.
So are you suggesting that the main Gramps window should be dimmed when the Manage Family Trees dialog is active?
New Tree, Rename & Load (or New Tree, Rename, Load & Import) — yeah, felt convoluted when I first started using Gramps too.
(For people migrating to Gramps with a GEDCOM, I usually suggest starting with Gramps not running. Then use the “Open with” context menu for the GEDCOM file on your desktop to use Gramps. That opens Gramps, creates the new tree, renames to match the GEDCOM, Loads that blank tree and Imports the GEDCOM file … all in a single user click.)
Your point about the hints for the Suffix and Prefix but lacking one for Surname is interesting.
Thank you for your reply.
Seems I’ve found the correct thread…
GRAMPS 6.0.8 Windows 11
I tried to write the comments above from what I think a new prospective user might experience - a person with some general knowledge of Windows and the more-or-less standard “feel” of its application software packages, some knowledge of collecting family history and genealogy, but no knowledge of the relational data model nor, of course, how to use GRAMPS.
[I should admit that now well retired, I had 40+ years programming, designing end-user systems and interfaces experience , and also taught database theory and applications for many years.]
[This editor messed up my paragraph numbering / indentation, copied from another text editor.]
2.A. There are three fundamental folders involved in using GRAMPS: The location of the program itself, the location of the user file(s) / database(s), and the location of where the media will be stored.
These should be specified during installation (as is usual in Windows installs). Tough, due to the write restrictions on “c:\program files” and the havoc OneDrive can inflict on
“c:\..user..\documents”.
Consider “c:\gramps”, “c:\gramps databases”, “c:\gramps media files”, or some such, respectively.
2.B. Absolutely, uninstalling GRAMPS should NOT delete the database(s) or media file(s). Separating their file structures would help. Even better would be setting the database(s) or containing folder (ditto media files) to read-only upon closing GRAMPS. Could even give the user a “read only” vs “modify” option while GRAMPS is running.
Re “So are you suggesting that the main Gramps window should be dimmed when the Manage Family Trees dialog is active?”: Yes and sort-of No. When GRAMPS is started ONLY the main Gramps window should appear, allowing access to the introductory text panel (the text there could use some editing - a topic covered somewhere else in these discourse threads). Then a [NEW] or [OPEN] button / menu item opens the Manage Family Trees dialog.
Convoluted New Tree, Rename & Load process would be ameliorated by (3).
I’ll try to document other (major / minor) interface issues as I encounter them.
Here are three:
5.A. Left menu items use plural entity names where appropriate (not Geography or Media) EXCEPT “[People]”! That one should really be named [Persons].
5.B. After opening a Tree (Database) and selecting [People(sic)], the “Filter” panel opens. There are explicit icons to Add a Person [+] and to Edit a Person [Edit], WHY is it assumed that one wants to Filter (er, “Search”) the Person table / listing? That panel takes up a lot of real estate.
5.C.1. A little deeper in the process: [Add a New Person],[Add an Event],[Invoke Date EDITOR] and the “Date SELETION - Gramps” dialog appears.
5.C.2 Continuing from above: Is “text only” the correct initial Type? I don’t know, and selected “regular”, and entered the date as YYYY MMM DD, per the order in the dialog. [OK]. Back to the Event Reference Editor. NOW the Date is shown as DD MMM YYYY. WHY the change?
I found the Command Terminal window on the launch disconcerting when a Gramps novice too. There have been some discussions of having a tiny launcher with a Splash Dialog. That could alleviate concerns about the slow startup on first use (compiling and caching the source code) and the Terminal window.
A&B I’d encourage others to join in and discuss give their opinions about folder organized and management issues. We need a broad cross-section of viewpoints.
I see your point about not having the modal Family Trees dialog and Tip of the Day dialog appear before users have a chance to experience the interface. I’ve suggested a different set of onboarding gramplets than we’ve been using for the initial launch. This is my current set of experimental gramplets:
Brian,
Do you want me to continue to post on discourse?
Some of them will be pretty detailed.
Or send them directly to you via email (maybe PDF attachments)?
I have a couple in draft.
One is short:
In the display of the contents of the various entity tables…
1.A. The (reference) ID is the first column for Families.
1.B. The last column for Events.
1.C. The second column for Places, Sources, Citations, Repositories, and
Notes.
WHY? I would prefer either first or last.
On your mock-up of a possible new main screen…
2.A. YES, YES on an button to get rid of the Welcome! panel.
(I’m formulating some thoughts on the content of that panel, and for a
set of web-based tutorial chapters referenced by the panel.)
2.B. NO, NO on lots of individual What’s Next / To Do / etc panels.
The samples appear to be internal developer stuff.
Maybe a USER’s set of ToDo items selected from Notes, arranged as a
list, permitting easy deletes by the user for completed tasks.
2.C. OK on real ToolTips with [Next] and [Close].
But not the same one(s) on each execution of the program.
Thus lots of them embedded in a distribution selected by MMM/DD?
btw. GRAMPS is a marvelous system!
Perhaps I can inject a bit of interface ideas; but certainly not on its
functionality. In general, there are far too many ways to accomplish any
desired user task, but sometimes there is not an obvious method to
accomplish something that should be “easy”. That creates some of its
complexity.
Before I found GRAMPS, I was thinking about building my own (much much
less capable) system but along very similar basic design ideas:
Robert Teitel
To all who replied: I just want to say thanks for replying. I don’t have time/energy right now to review all of them. But I will make time to review and try to learn from what you’ve written. Then I’ll follow up with more questions if there are any. Until then.
Gramps sorts on the 1st column by default. The default order of columns evolved through feedback about what was useful.
However, you can use the View → Configure to enable/disable columns and re-order them.
(b) the examples are not ‘Developer’ . They are Genealogical Researcher instructions. “To Do” Notes are notes-to-myself that genealogists can write. The content in the example is what shows if your Tree does not yet have any “To Do” notes to show.
(c) Content in these gramplets is not static. They are aware of the current state of the Tree data and change based on that. “Context awareness” is a big part of “Gramplets”. (The “Tip of the Day” is random. But only but date-oriented gramplets have their content driven by mmm-dd: Anniversary reminder lists, On this Day, Calendars, etc.)
A few of the current gramplets (such as “Welcome” and FAQ) violate that paradigm. They have hard-coded static content. My prototype replacements are already more dynamic.
As to “building your own”… that also can be facilitated with Gramps tools. (Although beyond the scope of this novice “Help” thread.) Both the original Gramps (for desktops) and Gramps Web (for servers) are built on the highly flexible Gramps Engine.
They are (respectively) Gtk and Javascript interfaces for display and editing data managed by the Gramps Engine. Thus, anyone so inclined could build their own GUI on top using its API. And design their own workflows and restrictions.
I’d like to thank everyone who answered my questions. @emyoulation @DaveSch Take care and be well!
