Quickest and easiest way to start a Tree

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1

After working on the beta What’s Next? gramplet for a long time, I’d like to share my opinion on the 2 most-straightforward ways to start your Tree in 5.2 Gramps as it stands today.

Hopefully, a lot of dissenting opinions will be voiced, supported by their suggested workflow.

I deeply disagree with dragging newbies through the convoluted process in the “Start with Genealogy” wiki article recommended in the Welcome to Gramps! gramplet.

Import using a source file from another application:

  1. Close Gramps after installing. Import is easier with it not running.
  2. Use your OS’es context menu option to choose an App to open your import source file.
    Use Gramps to open that file (GEDCOM, vCard, Gramps file from a friend)
    Gramps will automatically create a Tree file with the same filename, load the empty tree, and import to it.
  3. set the Home Person so that Charts and Relationships views have a focus
    a) in the People view, select the Person (explain proband, progenitor, progenitrix. The user will have to make a blind guess about the choice of person.)
    b) in the menus, choose Edit → Set Home Person
  4. add GPS coordinates to at least the birthplace of the Home Person so that Geography view will have something to plot.

Starting from scratch:

  1. start Gramps
  2. from the menus, Family Trees → Manage Family Trees…
    a) Add a Tree
    b) name the tree
    c) load the tree
  3. from the menus, choose Add → Family
  4. in the New Family object editor:
    a) add a father, mother or Child
    b) add a “vital statistic” event to the new person
    c) add a date to the Event
    d) add a Place for the Event (with GPS coordinates)
    e) click OK on all those floating dialogs (new place, new event, new person, new family)
  5. in the People view, select the Person
  6. in the menus, choose Edit → Set Home Person (explain proband, progenitor, progenitrix)

Both processes take a new user to a baseline state.

Arguably, the next steps should be:

  1. Create a citation at some level of the Person or Family. (Since Gramps does not have any feature that encourages consistently attaching citations during data entry, explaining how to use the Clipboard to cite is a vital skill.)
  2. show how to grow the family around the active person in the Relationships view: add spouse (for spouse and/or children), add parents, add a sibling. (Navigate the Active Person focus to the next person and repeat.)
  3. Explain adding Family event data, Relationship type, and Role.

If I thought newcomers could handle it, I’d recommend installing the experimental PlaceTool from @kku. Because it is inevitable that their first places will be entered (or imported) with names in comma separated breadcrumb format. (The built-in Extract Place Data from a Place Title was demoted to an addon and will not extract a hierarchy from a manually keyed-in breadcrumbed place name anyway. The PlaceCleanup addon will agonizingly process the breadcrumbs one-by-one. But the configuration for GeoNames is fussy and the complexity it adds in alternative Place names and Place citations is overwhelming.)

  1. install the PlaceTool addon gramplet, add the gramplet to Places view, create a Place with a breadcrumb name, generate hierarchy
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some positive/negative reactions would be welcome.

Maybe this abbreviated outline should replace the “Start with Genealogy” wiki article (maybe pushing that content to an “alternative workflow” article?

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I would encourage a format that suggests starting from scratch first. Many imports are really messy (looking at you Ancestry), and cleaning them up is definitely not Gramps 101.

I would also suggest Citations being sooner, but with the current state of Citations, maybe that should wait until those are working a little more intuitively.

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4

You really need various quick ways to start with GRAMPS in the WIKI

Assuming that an individual already has a tree from somewhere to import is targeting only those people with some (maybe significant) family history expertise, ignoring those that are beginners and want somewhere to build a tree from scratch like they may have started on Ancestry or other commercial database.

Take them straight to Pedigree View and step them through the process again on the lines of Ancestry.

Why explain the pro…'s experienced people will probably know, many users will not care and if somebody is really interested in an explanation DuckDuckGo (other search engines are available) will supply the answer

This answer comes across negatively but I think the work you have done is useful but limiting

phil

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5

I thought about that for a long while.

My take is that new users starting from an import to explore Gramps as an alternative are “less invested”. They are more likely to abandon the experiment if wading through the “start from scratch” delays their “instant gratification” those extra 3 minutes.

There is not even a hint of “instant gratification” to be had when starting from scratch. So that’s why I pushed the “Scratch” workflow down the introduction.

The original “Start with Genealogy” stressed citation first and foremost… because all serious genealogists stress sourcing. But consistent citing is an afterthought in Gramps’ workflow. While I’d like to start earlier with citations, it is like leading with “Gramps is good except for this most important part of genealogy…” then going on to explain how Gramps doesn’t work well there.)

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Absolutely agree not prone to nightmares but citations can certainly induce them

How do you take a relatively simple concept make it extremely complicated to implement and maintain somebody’s enthusiasm and interest while trying to explain it, that is a circle I would definitely like to see squared.

phil

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7

The Pedigree View is utterly non-functional until a 1st person is created and made active. There is actually no way to start from scratch within that view.

It is viable to jump into the Pedigree View at the “Grow the tree” stage for ancestors. And more intuitive for adding Parents. Adding siblings or aunts/uncles is possible (adding Children tab the parent Family Editor) but not intuitive. Nor are there any options to add spouses or children of the Active Person. The only workaround I can see is the Add menu to insert a blank Family, then drag the person to that dialog.)

I hope that there are more intuitive family growth options for the Pedigree view. Have I missed something?

8

Yes it is old fashioned and clunky but you can “Add” people immediately after you have created the first person, you can create parents and siblings without leaving the Pedigree View. Simply right click and Add takes you to Family:New Family-Gramps what more do you need as a starter. The configuration options can be explored and then progression to the different views.

Maybe just maybe this thought will inspire some developer to make improvements.

This all leads nicely into Card View, maybe the new Family Tree View or even dare I suggest GraphView but all those need more experience and learning to install Addons seems like a natural progression to me.

phil

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OK. Keep in mind that 6.0 is locked down for new code … although Preferences changes and additions/deletions from the bundle of plugins are possible. Increasingly less likely, but possible. So we have to work within what exists today plus documentation improvements.

You restated my points, as of today:

  • adding via the Pedigree is an option only after a creating the 1st person and making them the Active Person
  • adding Preferred Parents is possible and intuitive
  • adding siblings is possible but less intuitive
  • adding a spouse and children is possible via a counter intuitive workaround
  • if you forgot to add at least 1 child when adding a spouse, you are a bit stuck

Given all these oddities, Pedigree View is (currently) only a good data-entry solution for adding direct ancestors and siblings.

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Brian

I am not asking for immediate code changes or anything like, you asked for opinions and I gave it freely no worries if it is not accepted but preferably not ignored.

The problem I see is that GRAMPS is becoming more and more complex, more and more expanding along the routes(interests) of the various developers which is all to the good but I think it is probably putting off a large number of potential users.

The reason being the sheer expansion of the things it is capable of doing make it an incredibly steep learning curve for a new start in family history who might have a wealth of talent in other areas such as expanding the developer pool in the future or even maintaining the WIKI.

phil

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You are right. I have revised the ‘ask’ to discuss the workflows for Gramps as it stands today. (“Today” meaning in Gramps 5.2 or Gramps 6.0 beta 2 for desktops.)

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So, I will be the first to admit I’m a total newb at Gramps, but I’m not new to either complex programs or to genealogy, or commercial genealogy software. So, I read the wiki (most of it) and then imported my Ancestry file, tried to make it useable for about 3 hours and then gave up. And my Ancestry file is not total garbage. No no link to the infamous One World Tree or Millennium File, doesn’t go back to Adam and Eve, etc :smiley:. To be fair, I haven’t tried importing my RM file.

The next day, I started with a fresh file.

I think, if you are targeting people who need the “instant gratification,” I would include suggestions of what to prune out of the export (if their current program allows it, Ancestry does not). Then add Step 2.5 that is the clean-up step. Because that is where I went off track and I never made it back to your Step 3; I went off on a wild hair trying to fix things that I could see came in wrong, and I couldn’t because I didn’t know the program well enough. I know “Import from another genealogy program” covers some of that, but the instant grat people will not read all of that, and it seems a little out of date as well.

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13

My daft idea for the day: why not have the sample database preloaded when you do a clean install of GRAMPS so people new to GRAMPS will at least have a plaything there to look and learn from.

Over the years I have created/recreated 2 simple variants of my own for areas that I wanted to test without risking my my main research tree.

phil

14

Hello !

There’s almost one point that should be more (better) explained :
As you can read on wiki “One of the most important things in genealogy is that you record how and where you found/deduced the information. This is known as a Source.”

It’s not clear enough !

A source can be a book, a registry, but not “the proof of an event” itself. The citation of the source is the more direct proof (an act in a registry, a specific page or paragraph in a book…).

So, as example, a birth act should be recorded as a Citation, and the registry as the source from where the act is extract.
As many people when I first used Gramps, I recorded acts as sources… That’s why when I recommend Gramps it’s one of the first thing I try to explain and well understood.

They are also two “out of subject” (hors-sujet) points that doesn’t make Gramps as popular as it should be :

  1. Many people turns to other software than Gramps, because they are more “user friendly” and easy to use when they start their genealogy on a computer. Like “Add a birth act”, “Add a marriage act” filling information and most of records are made where they should be (Kind of Wizards from acts) and even create records for persons (eg. parents) and union from one simple act when they are not already in database (Should have a look on Heredis).

  2. As I already explained in another other post (don’t remember when), missing of visual controls (icons, colors etc.) in interface. A way to set when I should consider an event has enough proofs (citations and their different levels), not by opening each event but directly visually by the way it’s displayed (color, specific icon and not only in list, but also when it’s mentioned).

Sorry for this “intrusion”, but these three points (this subject, and those above), are, to my humble point of view, those that should be reinforced in next version…

I didn’t try 6.0.0betas, but today I’m really thinking about using a Virtual Machine with Windows on it to use some other software (free like ELIE6 or not like Geneatic or Heredis).

Thanks for reading.

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15

As I explained in the following post:

The most user-friendly approach is to use the Graphview + Combined view pair
In particular for its interactivity, we see what we are doing and thus protect ourselves from erroneous entries
The Recent Item plugin is also of immense service for repetitive entry, especially if we want to give the source of all the events entered
This is my personal practice

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Graphview + Combined view pair is even more userfriendly if they both were added to gramplets to choice and so floatable. Then parallel working is possible and more effective.

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17

Hello bjc49 !
Thanks for your answer, but “Graphview + Combined view” ?

Are you talking about {1} Graph View plugin (Vue Graphique) ? And {2} Combined view (Relationships) ?

I agree to use {1}“Graph view” to view tree could do the trick if only mouse scroll was used to scroll and not zooming. As in many software (Gramps too) mouse interactions are :

  • Scroll → Vertical scrolling
  • Shift+Scroll (or mouse which have this feature) → horizontal scrolling
  • Ctrl+Scroll → Zoom in/out

About {2}“Combined View plugin Relationships” I agree, it’s really a good plugin, but I’m still using the classic one because sometimes for no reason view change (another person is display, not the one I was on, nor from another selection, as if the “last selected id” was reset or null), and a few minutes ago (when trying to find how to reproduce that) a new reaction I never met before it displayed a view but not from an individual but a little extract of an event or a tag I don’t know exactly what it was only One word “Décès” and a little red rectangle (as a minus sign)…
So using something that is buggy is not safe to my mind.

But when i talked about “more intuitive” it’s not the better way to use Gramps GUI, but some also offering some features like inserting data while reading an act (Adding data from a marriage act requires morrrrrre times in Gramps than in some other software which include this functionality and so looks more really easy to use.
As an example, imagine an old uncle gives you a marriage act from its own grand-parents where you can find, the couple itself, parents of each (-> 4 individuals) witnesses (some are linked to one of them as brother or uncle), and much details like where they live (new or existing place in your data ?), their occupation (job) and sometimes both parents of one or both spouses are dead and are represented by another parent (uncle, aunt, grand-parent…).
How many individuals you’ll have to add ? How many individuals you’ll have to select ? How many links, couples etc. How much time and risks should generate this in Gramps the way we add today against a sort of well designed Wizard to enter data from a specific act ? (may be take inspiration from ELIE6, or Heredis or any other genealogical software which have this kind of feature even if it’s partial)

Ability to use personalized icons for some specific contents and displaying them quite every where it’s possible (more readable colored square of tags in {2}“Combined View plugin Relationships”). Adding a filter on select box for existing individual (select father, mother, children…)

Ability to define set of rules to be able to specify when a record (event, citation, individual, couple…) can be considered as “complete”. Today I use personalized filter and tags with some emojis, but it’s clearly not optimal nor always easy but the best way I found.

Well, I think (IMHO) that some (good) reasons why most of people tends to use other software than Gramps (which I still use and try to recommend because I think is still the best when you want something more powerful and “logic” when your mind is more oriented on “research” than quick “visual results”).

Thanks for reading this :slight_smile:

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I may have missed this
But how do you do it exactly?

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573 / 5 000

I don’t know the other software you’re talking about because being on Linux I preferred not to use a Windows emulator (Wine I think…) But what you describe is relatively easy thanks to these views and I’m used to transcribing all the information from the acts with supporting citations All this thanks to Graphview’s contextual menus and in particular its search bar to find family contexts Here is for example one of my files after exporting to Geneanet: https://gw.geneanet.org/bjc49?lang=fr&n=brevard&nz=brevard&p=guillaume&pz=jean+claude

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I’m on Linux too, but I don’t use Wine, I got a virtual machine (Virtualbox) under Windows :wink:
Sometimes I also use Gramps on macOS, but it’s quite rare.
This allows me to test several Genealogy software.

On the other hand, I’m also working on using Dokuwiki (with Struct plugin) to manage my genealogy (I don’t care about GEDCOM import/export1), and a php script to generate Dokuwiki pages from Gramps’ SQL export (and maybe later port this script as a plugin for Dokuwiki). In fact it would look easier for some people to create a “Gramps export plugin” to generate this pages, but I can’t spend time I don’t have for this (Python language, create an environment to develop Gramps only for one plugin).

1 About GEDCOM : Too much Genealogical software uses this protocol as a Datamodel and don’t add functionalities that are not described in GEDCOM which is only a protocol (As Webtrees, ancestris…)

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