Here are some suggestions to help navigate from window to window while reducing mouse clicks to do that.
On the Person: screen, add an icon that will open the Family screen when the person is either the a) child or b) the parent (in that order). If no Family record exists, the icon is grey’d out or hidden. It might be places between the ID: field and the Tags: label. Use the same icon for family that is used in the Geography section.
On the Family screen, 3 additions:
- beside the Edit icon for both Father and Mother, add a Family icon that will close the existing record and open the family record for that person being selected, where that person is the child.
- add the “Family” menu selection item to the right mouse menu for the children in the family. The Family menu selection will open the family record for that child when they are either the Mother or Father. If none exists, the menu selection is hidden.
Closing an Editor dialog when opening a second is a pretty big departure for the interface.
One of the things that Gramps has pretty consistent about is: giving a final opportunity to abandon or commit the changes when closing an Editor Dialog. (With the layers of dialogs, that is through the Cancel/OK buttons.)
To support this new kind of transparent dialog navigation might also need an option added to the Warning tab of Preferences to suppress a confirmation dialog.
(Chris Horn has implemented a single-click navigation in his LinkedView/Browse View. And there’s also a throttling option on the floating dialog Preferences. So if you limit it to 1 floater, it basically does what you’re describing. You should explore that experimental Add-on and see how closely it comes to meeting your criteria.)
I don’t really think it is too different. It should be handled the same way as an exit without a save. Prompt to save or discard before opening the new record. I think all the code should already be there.
Optionally if a change has been made, the feature could be disabled.
Personally, I’ll never vote for that. I may have several family editors opened at the same time. This will be a too big challenge.
Why don’t you use the graphview addon for that kind of usage ?
I think all you want is already in the graphview addon except closing the editor.
I agree.
I frequently have 2 Family editors or Person Editors up side-by-side. Particularly useful when adding step-children from a previous marriage to a subsequent marriage or straightening out cousins who are both namesakes of the same ancestor. They are very useful when resolving ambiguities.
However, after working on the wiki for years, I assure you that the “swapping editor” proposed behavior is a major departure with far-reaching implications.
That means this will end up being something where the software architect should make the call. Input from a broad cross-section of users would be good.
However, the overload of floating dialogs is obviously a confusing aspect of Gramps. It has been a discussion point and, to date, with no satisfactory alternative proposed.
And there is a repeatedly reported but un-addressed bug where closing a parent dialog will warn about a spawned dialog changed being unsaved. Despite selecting the choice offered to save the change, it fails fail to attach a new objects.
So the project would benefit from more approaches being proposed & discussed.
This is why I love the Relationships view.
Based upon the active person you can open any individual parent, sibling, or the family record. Or any spouse, child or those families.You can add parents, spousal family, children or siblings. All just one mouse click away and not having to right-click anything.
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