Recent items addon

I am a reasonably expert Gramps user since about 2010, but not a Gramps developer. I would like to reduce the number of mouse clicks when using gramps and have read on this forum that the “recent items” addon will enable this. I have also read that items from this collections are intended for developers, not users.

I have tried, without success, to find the recent items addon by adding the project
https://github.com/Taapeli/isotammi-addons/tree/master/source/recent-items to Edit->Addon Manager->Projects

Should I be using the “recent items” addon? If so, how do I install it?

David Lynch

AIO64-6.0.6–1
Windows 11

Ignore my reply, see the correct advice from @emyoulation .

Others may correct me but if I remember correctly to install this addon you must manually copy the entire ‘recent items’ from github to your Gramps plugin folder. When you then open Gramps the relevant dialog boxes have the recent items feature.

No, you have the Projects set incorrectly. So you are not even touching the Isotammi addon collection yet.

First and least intuitive: the Addon Manager projects rarely point at one particular addon. That only happens when a Developer is sharing an addon that is still in the ‘experimental’ or ‘βeta Testing’ stages.

Instead, the URL points at a “list” or “catalog” of add-on plug-ins in a currated collection of addons. (It is a bit opaque too because the URL is actually to a folder that will have a particularly named subfolder that containers JSON files.) Those files are lists of the available addons, their descriptions in various languages, and path to the download for each addon. Since GitHub prohibits your browser from listing the folder contents, you cannot easily inspect what is available.

The Isotammi project URL for Gramps 6.x should be:
tps://raw.githubusercontent.com/Taapeli/isotammi-addons/master/addons/gramps60

Documented at:
https://www.gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Addon:Isotammi_addons#Installation

The second part is that the filters in the Addons tab of the Addon Manager default to hide plugins that are more risky or use more resources. So the Gramps’ default “Everyone” Audience setting is similar to the “G” rating (general admission) for movies rather than “PG” or “R” rating. So you can remove those “nanny” settings by changing Audience to “All Audiences” and Status to “All Statuses”

Using the Settings tab might be a better choice because:

  1. it does not have those “nanny” filters
  2. it does mass installs compared to the Addons tab only installing one-by-one. There are a LOT of great Isotammi addons… and they are all worth installing.

Now for the good news… once the Recent Items addon is installed and you restart Gramps, its use is blindingly obvious. It adds short list to the top of every Object Selector dialog. The contains a list of the 6 most recently used objects. (It remembers between sessions… but is initially empty.)

See the README.md note for Recent Items

Fortunately, the “manual install” requirement went away when @kku migrated Recent Items from his experimental personal GitHub repository into the Isotammi curated collection. Tge Addon Manager can now be used.

OK, I’ve edited my reply.

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Thank you for your advice. I changed the project, used the settings option, restarted gramps and all worked.

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