Was Gramps your first?

[trlvn]

Did anyone here start their family history journey with Gramps?

It comes up regularly that we should make Gramps easier for new users. Generally, people seem to assume this means people who are brand-new to genealogy.

I would submit that Gramps deserves to be your last genealogy software. It is powerful and flexible but comes with no small learning curve. The former justifies the latter.

Folks that are brand new to genealogy should probably start with one of the commercial packages. Those packages are expressly designed for ease of use and offer new-user support that is well beyond what this project is capable of. A lot of these people are going to dabble and decide they want to do other things instead. Some will continue and choose to stay with the commercial package they know. That’s all fine.

On the other hand, some will become disenchanted with their first software and will look for alternatives that offer flexible and powerful ways to record and present family history the way they want. Gramps still needs to be easy to use but we don’t need to spend finite resources trying to entice first-time, blank-page users.

Perhaps I’m wrong but I think that pretty much the only new users that start with Gramps are either dedicated to FOSS (to the exclusion of commercial options) or have a considerable database/IT background. Or both.

Gramps does not need market share. We do not “lose” if new users don’t choose Gramps. I think Gramps should ‘lean-into’ being the genealogy software you don’t outgrow. “Start wherever you want. Gramps will be there when you’re ready.”

So, again, how many of you started with Gramps?

Craig
(I started with a program called Gene in the early 1990’s. Its limitations became apparent over a few years which led me to think a lot about what I wanted. Which led to Gramps.)

[emyoulation]

@trlvn

Did anyone here start their family history journey with Gramps?

I did start with Gramps. At least the part of the journey with a database rather than hand-generating static webpages. Sure, there was an abortive review and immediate rejection of primitive software in 1988. But that lasted less than an hour as it was so painful and limited to less than a hundred people when working with micro-floppy disks. Anyone could do more (and more quickly) with a 3-ring binder and 3 photocopied blank paper forms: a (3-5 generation variants) pedigree form, a family group sheet and a research log sheet.

It was NOT my intent to get into digital genealogy. I just wanted to untangle the convoluted data in a 24 page booklet on the Locke lineage from 1924.

And you’re correct that Gramps does not need market share. But it does need more depth and breadth in the talent pool of volunteers. The community needs people designing more reports and analysis tools. We need a pool of UX/UI people coming up with new and innovative data-entry methods and handling Gtk toolkit evolution. Gramps needs people to take tedious load off the core team so they can be creative. We need to grow the number of experienced people who can jump in when there is turnover/burnout in key positions.

The potential people who can grow into these positions have the skills to spot easily fixable flaws in the first 5 minutes. They see them, say “oh, hell no” and bail out. If these leaks to the filling of our talent pool can easily be patched, then … why not?

And it is very disconcerting when very experienced users feel compelled to consistently recommend other software over Gramps. Like Enno does with RootsMagic. And more disconcerting that his reasoning is justifiable.

[StoltHD]

My first genealogy software was actually Legacy. I found it for my mother so that she could more easily conduct her family research. Since I was always her “superuser,” I had to learn Legacy thoroughly.

Back then, Legacy was not translated, so I hacked it and translated the GUI and most reports into Norwegian—about five years before they released their own well-translated version. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about the lack of UTF-8 support and a few other issues.

I also tested out RootsMagic, PAF, Ancestries, bought a license for Clooz 1, used Freeplane

When my mother passed away, I continued the research. However, I soon encountered information related to the Norwegian Mercantile Fleet during both World War I and World War II, which required software with fewer limitations.

This was when the first Gramps 5.0 Alpha or Beta was released, but I couldn’t get the AIO and add-ons (gramplets) installed on my Windows computer; I encountered tons of errors. So, I started searching for alternative software and tools. I now have close to 2,500 research software options registered in a Zotero database, most of which I have tested or tried out over a period of two to three years—everything from Twine Storyteller software to Freeplane, Palladio, MongoDB, and Neo4j.

After some time, I managed to get nearly everything in Gramps working without crashes and found almost everything I was looking for in this software. However, I identified five main limitations:

• A network graph view that included events, places, and sources, with links for any type of relationship.
• A better, more historically accurate way of registering events, which I call “Main/Sub-Events.”
• Events on places where people could be linked as participants to a place-centric event.
• Better source and citation handling, utilizing, for example, CSL or at least a way to interchange sources and citations from a bibliography software like Zotero or JabRef, or BibTeX, using CSL JSON, BibLaTeX, RIS, or similar file formats for interchangeable bibliography data.
• Export and import from at least one commonly used network graph or knowledge graph open-source, open-data format, or at least a full export to CSV, so that data could be more easily exchanged with other research tools often used in historical research.

After a while, I started testing Obsidian because of its graph view and found the Neo4j plugin for that software. At the same time, I got the MongoDB DB-API for Gramps working on my Windows PC, so I created a link between the MongoDB database and Neo4j, combining my research notes in Obsidian with my Gramps database in MongoDB, using Neo4j as a “hub.” Then, MongoDB did an update, and the original MongoDB API no longer worked.

I hired a Python developer to create an export script to Excel, and then I developed some VBA in Excel that converted all the Gramps data I had in tables to Markdown, so I could still use it in Obsidian and FOAM.

Today, I only use Gramps as an archive tool/system; all my research is done in Zotero, Obsidian, FOAM for VSC, Gephi, Cytoscape, Tulip, Constellation, Aeon, QGIS, Clooz 4, OpenRefine, Tropy, and even Excel.

I still think Gramps is the absolute best genealogy software regarding features for registering and storing data, but I also believe Gramps can be a really good historical research tool with the aforementioned features. With a wider user base, especially in social and historical research, there will likely be some experienced Python and/or R users/developers who might start contributing to the project and maybe even have some ideas for other useful views and reports.

It will be easier to create some “bridges” to other software when Gramps 6 is released, but I think I will continue using my Markdown approach as a hub to tie other software to my data; it is so easy to create notes and then just link them to the object of interest in Gramps or other software I use. And maybe I’ll get my new Python script/gramplet to work, so I can export both to Markdown and a network graph format with a configuration for my data and research the way I need it exported.

Gramps is maybe the very best and most flexible software for genealogy, but with relatively small changes, it can be much more versatile.

[Robert]

I’ve only ever used Gramps for my genealogy interests - I’ve never tried other software. At the time I started, I was using Linux and it seemed a pretty powerful application. Nowadays I’m using a Mac - still find it astonishingly capable (I’d still like pdf thumbnails to work ) so much so that I often discover things I’d not noticed before. I actually enjoy figuring out complex software.

I often wonder if I’m using it correctly, but it works really well for me. I generate narrated website views for family members to look into.

Recently I also set up GrampsWeb in a container on a Raspberry Pi for a single tree, but the instructions for multi-tree installations weren’t clear enough for me. I’ve stuck with the Desktop version of Gramps for now.

[csam]

I started using MyHeritage, but after a some years found it being too expensive. The good things about MyHeritage is the UI, which is very intuitive. The SmartMatch can very easily add a lot to your tree, but you risk getting a lot of crap. The UI doesn’t care about source citations.
I switched to Ancestris, a Java based application, which in many ways are ok, but data is stored in a GEDCOM file, so with a couple of hundred persons it gets very slow.
Been using Gramps for about a year, and are very happy with it. But the workflow is not for non-IT people. If you know Ted Codd’s normalization rules for a relational database the workflow might seem natural. I think the new FamilyTreeView has the potential for becoming the general UI, especially when the ‘add relative’ function is implemented.
I have lately tested MacFamilyTree v11, it has a very user friendly interface as well as some features, that would be nice to have in Gramps - ‘Stories’ and the FamilySearch integration.

[kmikkels]

I startede back in the seventies - All paper and visiting the archives. Along game the forstå computers sith msdos, and I found brothers keeper and PAF. When windows and winfamily arrived, I switched to that. Unfortunately a “professional” company bought the rights to the software, and the development stopped. Tried gramps for Windows, but found it ugly and to difficult to use. Paused My research for other reasons, and when i startede again, i had dropped windows and converted to Linux on All My devices. So gramps was the obvious choice, and after some initial issues i saw the light, and now i wouldn’t use anything else.
I can record everything i find, it is free, it is open source, everything is on My computer, and there is a very friendly community - it is great!

[comeng]

Well said, my path was more or less the same except I had a brief flirt
with Ms Access and VBA because I was using it for other things,
abandoned Windows because I had to block all updates when working on one
project because of the constant issues, which cost me a lot of time to
sort whenever they updated.
phil

[Cynwrite]

I started on the OG Family Tree Maker in DOS. I’ve tried just about everything there is. Including Gramps a few years ago but couldn’t get it to work on Windows. Then I got the long-awaited update to Roots Magic, only to have them turn around a year later and require a paid upgrade. No thanks.

Also, I need genealogy software that can copy an event without sharing it. Gramps can’t do that yet, but at least I can put in a feature request or do it myself, if it comes to that.

I will admit, Obsidian hadn’t occurred to me. I have mostly been relying on Ancestry (as my dumping ground) and the excellent Evidentia by @ed4becky (as my proving ground), but I’m excited about getting it organized in Gramps, although I agree with BOTH:

@emyoulation

it does need more depth and breadth in the talent pool of volunteers.

and

@trlvn

Gramps deserves to be your last genealogy software

As soon as I get acclimated, I’ll start helping more. Always need to get the lay of the land before you start landscaping.

[Davesellers]

My wife started entering family tree stuff into document files on a Commador64 back in 1973. Eventually I helped her move it to a program called Parents which used MSaccess. Through time and changes of computers, I could not get that program to work any longer. Asked our son who is a software Engineer and he suggested Gramps. It has been a steep learning curve for sure and I’m still finding things that I have somehow missed.

[jacrider]

In a sense, it was Gramps that got me into genealogy and it is the only genealogy software I have really ever used.

My family got started working on our genealogy as a result of a homework assignment that my sister was given in 1976 when we were both in high school. I helped until I left for college, but it was all on paper at that time.

I earned degrees in mathematics and computer science and began a career of developing custom Unix-based software for scientists and engineers that I worked with, and I began using Linux at home in 1994. In the meantime, my brother had helped my parents with their genealogy efforts all the way through school and had computerized their data after he found Brother’s Keeper. By the mid-90s, my mother had exhausted all of the sources she could find, and after that she didn’t do much other than add births, deaths, marriages, etc. whenever she received word from other family members.

About 2004, my mother thought she would like to move from Windows 98 to Linux because my brother and I both used Linux by that time, and she enlisted me to help find software that would run on Linux to replace the software she had been using. There were a few candidates for genealogy software at that time, but Gramps, even at version 1.0, was well ahead of the others and I was able to import a GEDCOM file from Brother’s Keeper and generate a web site containing the data without much difficulty. My mother never made the transition to Linux, but she wanted me to make the web site available to the rest of the family. I decided that if I was going to do that, I was going to at least attempt to correct some of the more obvious errors in the data and possibly expand on what she had given me. So I began learning about both genealogy and Gramps, and I found websites such as Ancestry.com, Missouri Digital Heritage, Mackley Genealogy, and others that provided a lot of information relevant to my family, and I continued working on it as time permitted. Since I finally retired three years ago, I’ve had more time to work on it, although I feel I still have a lot to learn, both about genealogy and some features of Gramps.

So from the time I really got involved with genealogy in 2004, Gramps has been my primary tool. I occasionally export a GEDCOM file and upload it to Ancestry.com to take better advantage of their hints in my research, and occasionally I will upload a GEDCOM file to other sites.

I also generate a Narrated Web Site and Dynamic Web Report for a family web site or to distribute to family members. But my most complete data is always in Gramps.

[adriandavey]

I find I am in agreement with Craig on most of his outline.

I have been using Gramps now since somewhere around 2010, after I had trialled several other products, and I needed something that gave me more control, and flexibility of output. I had also grown to a database then of several thousand individuals, now very much more than that.[About 4/5 of my database is there so we can confirm they are NOT connected, or only on an extremely distant branch.]

I have always avoided the various commercial offerings like the plague. And for practically all of my work I will as default opt for open source software.

I had an academic background, with extensive experience in applications for scientific and spatial analysis on a wide range of operating systems. When I ended up a university manager I also had to grapple with the inadequacies of the corporate systems our staff and students had to interact with…

Yes, getting Gramps to work for you is a quite big learning curve, but for people who want to do serious things with substantial data sets, there is a significant return on the investment of time and effort to learn how to get the best out of it. I still consider myself only a partly familiarised Gramps user, but I have progressed to the state that I could not do without it.

[edveal]

I followed a similar path. My father was using Family Tree Maker in the 90’s and I was slowly getting into Open Source projects like Linux. I also shifted all my devices to Linux and found Gramps to be the best if not at the time the only viable solution. It did have a bit of a learning curve but I was prepared.

[stuck]

I inherited some family history in the form of narratives but I had no access to the genealogy software that held the records on which the narratives were based so I went looking for suitable software. My main criteria were ‘free’ and ‘for Windows’. Unsurprisingly, Gramps came up early on in my searching. It also came with good reviews (but don’t ask me to cite webpages) so I gave it a go.

Getting started wasn’t immediately obvious. The need to create an empty tree, then load that empty tree before you could get started didn’t exactly jump out but I got there. Adding people was a bit more obvious but it was only when I realised you then had to create families from the people, and then run a report / use a chart view in order to see what I thought of as a ‘family tree’.

Once I’d got that far it, at last, dawned on me that Gramps is primarily a relational db, not something for drawing a ‘family tree’. From there on, things began to fall into place quite quickly. However, I think my progress was because, although I can’t write code, when I was working I had worked closely with the db developers behind our custom business db system so I had a fair grasp of how a relational db works. Without that background though I think I might have struggled and moved on an alternative software.

[trlvn]

@stuck

Once I’d got that far it, at last, dawned on me that Gramps is primarily a relational db, not something for drawing a ‘family tree’.

I couldn’t agree more! For people with past db experience or at least the aptitude to visualize in db terms, Gramps is great. Otherwise, it is tough sledding. TBH, though, there are a lot of people that have that kind of background nowadays.

Craig

[codefarmer]

@trlvn

Did anyone here start their family history journey with Gramps?

No, but as you stated, I hope Gramps keeps evolving enough that I don’t have to move off. My journey started with Brothers Keeper (DOS, on floppies) then Family Tree Maker (Windows), then PhpGedView and finally since 2020 or so, Gramps.

[Lemodile]

More or less. One of my parents and a grandparent had done a bit of digging, partially on paper and partially on one of the more popular paid web platforms.

I have concerns regarding privacy, whether or not my work would be commercially used etc. so I looked for something clean; preferably open-source, free etc.

Gramps fit the bill beautifully. Little did I know how complex this hobby can get

[hviaene]

Gramps was my first. My late mother made a lot of researches and stored all her data in Haza-Data (commercial on DOS and probably not known outside Belgium (and maybe the Netherlands). Hazadata could export gedcom.
When she died in 2002 we were stuck, but not before we had been abled to get a complete gedcom-export.
A few years later I got started with Mandrake Linux and found gramps. Imported all the data and never looked back. Well, I had on odd times a quick look at other programs, but never felt any good reason to migrate.
And yes, I have a background in databases (Oracle and PC-stuff)

[Abelle123]

Yes it was, I found it and liked it (free, offline, made by dedicated volunteers), years ago. I do not have a background in databases, and I struggle with every update. I do not understand “gramplets” and simply use the “graphics” (grafieken in the Dutch version). I recently tried Legacy but it is too complicated for me, and I keep coming back to Gramps. I use some online sites (Ancestry for instance) but I do not really like their commercial interests.
I did an online course in Genealogy (at FutureLearn) and recommended Gramps to fellow students there.

[emyoulation]

I asked a similar question on the GRAMPS for Genealogists Facebook group a couple years ago:

• Nov 2022 Do you remember when you first started Gramps?
• Jan 2022 How did you get started with the Gramps software?