I am currently running Gramps 6.0.0 from Debian package installed on Kubuntu 25.04, although these problems have existed for some time. I just hadn’t noticed earlier because I have over 17,000 places and I don’t generally check the report pages very closely.
The only commonality I can find among the places that have problems is that the examples I’ve found involve places where there are two places of the same name but different types enclosed by the same place. The cases I’ve been looking at are in the St. Louis, Missouri area, in particular, the independent city of St. Louis and St. Louis county, and the city of Normandy and township of Normandy in St. Louis county. The first problem is that the Places index does not include both places, although some times the pages for both places are generated. The other problem is that sometimes links for the places will appear on other pages, but when I click on the link I get a File not found error.
I have a report at Crider / McDowell Family Tree - Surnames that exhibits the first problem. There are pages for both the city and county of St. Louis, but only the city is included in the index. Likewise, there are pages for both the city and township of Normandy in St. Louis county, but only the township is included in the index. This report does not include unused places.
I only noticed the second problem this week in some reports I generated after generating the report above and at first I thought I had messed up something in my database. But lots of testing with my current database and a backup of the database used to generate the report above exhibit the problem every time although not always the same pages. I also went back to a report generated in March using Gramps 5.2.4 on Kubuntu 24.04 and it had File not found errors for the cities of Normandy and St. Louis. I’ve also been experimenting with including unused places in the report as I realized I had not understood it, but I still get the same problems. Interestingly enough, I did not see either problem in a few cases I checked where there are counties and independent cities of the same name in Virginia.
Is there anything that can be done with regard to the first problem without adding the type to the place name? Are there any suggestions to debugging the second problem?
I will try to put something together but it may take some time.
“You can’t have two places with the same name and a different type at the same level in the place hierarchy.” This appears to me to be an artificial imposition that you have added to the Narrative report. It ignores reality and is not enforced by Gramps. Missouri has both a county and an independent city named St. Louis. Virginia has a number of independent cities with the same name as counties in the state. I don’t know about other states, but I know there are numerous counties in Missouri that have townships and cities with the same name. In some cases the city is within the township and I enter them that way when I am aware of it, but there are other cases where I haven’t done enough research to determine the correct hierarchy and it is easier to leave them separate until I do the research. Honestly, I don’t want to have to become an expert on every place that appears in my database before I can add it.
I have submitted bug report #13841 and attached a very simple tree that demonstrates both problems. It has only two people, five events, and seven places.
I have to agree with Serge that to use the Place Tree and Hierarchy you
have to give considerable thought to your structure to make best use of
GRAMPS.
Bitter experience has taught me this, at times I have spent as long
getting Places correct as I have adding new names to my tree.
It is worth spending the time on this.
phil
Independent cities are one of the US oddities for GIS.
Although surrounded by St. Louis county, the independent city of St. Louis is not part of the county administratively. It was separated from St. Louis county in April of 1877 and is now enclosed by the US state of Missouri. So both St. Louis independent city and St. Louis county are at the same level of administrative enclosure, differing only by ‘type’.
Besides the 38 (thirty-eight!!) Independent Cities in the USA state of Virginia, there are 3 in the rest of the USA: Baltimore, Maryland; St. Louis, Missouri; Carson City, Nevada. Both Baltimore and St. Louis are surrounded by (but not enclosed by) counties of the same name.
There is an even more confusing example: New York City. It is composed of 5 boroughs, each of which is enclosed by a county that enclosed nothing else. Manhattan borough is enclosed by New York county, enclosed by New York City, enclosed by New York state, enclosed by the United States of America.
I decided long ago to forget “administrative areas” these generally are temporary phases of existence dependent on the whim of politicians, civil servants and others.
So I stick with Geographical areas (yes I know these can change but I tend to use the historical ones).
So for Me
Gorton is enclosed by Manchester
(problem here is that there are at
least 30 Manchester's all over the globe.
Manchester is enclosed by Lancashire
Lancashire is enclosed by England
England is enclosed by United Kingdom
From what I could see, England’s politicians tend to be more whimsical than many other countries.
Although if I tried to include USA census enumeration districts or voter districting in the Place hierarchy, then the incessant gerrymandering would make that an exercise in frustration.