Single object export for troubleshooting

Ideas
1

Had to troubleshoot a problem on Facebook with a Tree where the date of a specific Death Event did not show in the Person’s charts.

After several iterations where it became increasingly clear the user was unfamiliar with Gramps, I asked for an XML of the problem object.

It was difficult to walk a novice through filtering for a single person export. TOO many steps! (Used the Clipboard to help them quickly create a Custom Filter for the Person. But they had tweaked all the export settings. Instead of a tiny 3kb XML, they sent a 1.1Mb containing the full mangled Place Tree and other unneccessary objects.)

Perhaps a single object raw XML Gramplet could be created? (Not an editor, just a simple view of a created temp file.)

Preferably, such a Gramplet could show raw XML for ANY primary object type (with the referenced secondary objects), not just Person objects.

This would offer a quick full visual inspection option that would greatly simplify troubleshooting problematic objects too.

If that Gramplet had a Copy to Clipboard button, the user could easily paste the content into the body of an eMail.

Note: The root cause of the problem was never isolated. But the symptom could be addressed. The user had imported a Geni GEDCOM into an existing Tree and subsequently merged the problematic person. Doing any edit (in this case, deleting the extraneous “Merged Gramps ID” attribute with an EXCESSIVELY long Geni related Gramps ID) forced Gramps to revalidate the Person & the Death Event date now correctly found.

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2

Gramps really needs a feature where you just select a number of people in the person list, and then right click and press export. (or on single people)

Filters are too complicated for things like this.

It would have made it much easier when I had two trees where like 5 people was in both with some unique information on them (not much, but some). and I didn’t want to merge the whole trees.

Ended up just adding the information all over again manually because filters were too complicated.

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3

Do you use the Tag workaround for this? (Agree that the export process is overly complex.)

I created a “Filter” tag. Then created a Person custom filter rule that looks for People with that tag.

This allows me to do an extended selection in the view, apply the tag to the select records, and export using this filter.

Note: it is easier & faster to delete the Tag and then recreate it in the Organize Tags dialog than to clear tags from records individually.

4

Could have, but didnt think of that at that spesific time.

Havent exported single or few things much in a while, but I am sure it will happen again at some point.