What parts of Gramps do/did you find to be overly complicated?
Are there UI functions that are too messy? Too many ways to do something?
Are there features that are hard to use? Hard to discover?
Do you have ideas on making Gramps easier not just for beginners, but for those that know Gramps too?
Clickety-clickety-clickety-click
I think this has been discussed many times - the number of mouse clicks needed to go to a specific piece of information. If the number of mouse clicks can be reduced, many users will be happy.
About a year ago I suggested one way to reduce the number of clicks by combining the citation window with the notes window. The idea is that for most citations there will only be one note.
The example above is made in Gimp, so thereās no code behind.
This example implements two things:
a) a field to enter a URL for the citation
b) a text field for the first note attached to the citation
Today Iām adding the citation URL in a note. This actually requires a number of extra clicks, because you must mark the URL as an internet link to be sure it is handled as a link in reports. NB! The notes editor fools you, by showing the URL as blue when the curser is on the URL text.
Having a specific field for the citation URL in the citation window saves you a lot of clicks as well as you can jump to the URL directly from the citation window.
I usually only have one note per citation. Being able to read/edit the note information in the citation window will save you a number of clicks. The editing in the āfirst noteā field should be simple without all the special functions (bold, italic, font colour etc) the note editor provides. If you want to use special text functions you can always edit the note with the note editor as today.
Maybe this idea can even be taken a step further by combining the events window with the citation window, but I havenāt given this idea many thoughts yet.
Some commands I use frequently are hidden beneath top level commands: for example, View ā Sidebar, while others at top level I never use (for example Family Trees). Make the toolbar configurable. The Libreoffice Tools->Customise does it well, allowing flexibility in toolbar and keyboard mapping.
When in the Person Edit dialog, clicking on a Marriage in the Family events doesnāt display the marriage, but brings up the Family Edit dialog, without the marriage being visible. Worse, then, both the person and family dialogs [OK] button are both active and visible, and clicking the wrong one can get you in a real muddle.
Set the focus in newly opened dialogs. Many do so already, some do not, leaving users confused about what is they are expected to do.
Provide an easy way to toggle between the bottom and top halves of dialogs which are divided.
If you get into a circular loop of opening references, you get a message such as āCannot edit this referenceā, which invites you (in a not very transparent way) to roll back your loop. Do something more transparent such as rolling back automatically.
(This may be just a Windows glitch.) The scrollbar on some dialogs disappears at certain widths of the dialog, you need to adjust the width to make it visible.
The Add an existing Place dialog and Add an Existing Citation or Source dialogs is unfriendly when the expected Place, Citation or Source does not exist. Add a facility to transit to new Place, Citation or Source without users having to cancel the existing Place, Citation or Source dialog.
David Lynch
Not sharing my experience on the topic, just commenting on a suggestion.
I do the same, but I am facing āURL rotā, i.e. the fate that even āpermalinksā are not as permanent as they are advertised. URLs inevitably change with time. Even the host name for public archival institutions may change.
When I recently decided to check my citation links (and other links too), I discovered that ~80% had become invalid. My tree is rather small, so I have only ~6k URLs in notes.
My first task was to analyse how my links became divergent. I categorised the URLs in a few families according to their structure and query syntax.
A URL can be split in a way which parallels the repository-source-hierarchy:
Implicitly, the notes reference the āactiveā repo-source-citation hierarchy and contain substitution directives to dynamically build the final real URLs.
While I restructured my links, one repository underwent a software update which changed the syntax of citation reference within a source. Once identified, it took me 10 seconds to change a ācommon factorā in the repo note and ~300 URLs were instantly restored to operational state.
All this to warn that adding a URL record (which has a rigid semantics in Gramps) in a citation does not address correctly āURL rotā. I also chose not to format my URL fragments as Link (because they arenāt URLs when considered individually and require processing to become full-fledged URLs).
Of course, this introduces complexity. As is the rule in Gramps, you have a lot of features and you can skip those you donāt need or donāt master. For the time being, my implementation is not yet user-friendly and is confusing in some circumstances (and I donāt know yet how to issue a warning in these circumstances).
This is your feeling. The object definition of gramps is the reason of this.
Only one thing at a time. This is not a problem for me.
I often have several notes for a citation.
No, this is based on several complaints about the number of clicks needed.
A good and well designed UI should hide the complexity of the underlying database structure.
This is certainly because they donāt know how gramps works.
I use it since 2004 and I donāt have this kind of problem.
Ok, but Iām not interested in changing āhow gramps worksā; Iām thinking about an alternative UX for those that choose it. So we donāt need to argue over this. Iām talking about an alternative mode that those that are happy can ignore.
With that settled, there are some great suggestions already.
This is a feature that gets suggested fairly regularly. Often users donāt know if an object exists, so they want to search for an existing object before creating a new one.
When adding a new place, the ability to enter a comma separated string has also been suggested in the past. Existing levels in the place hierarchy could be matched and new ones added, perhaps with the assistance of a dialog for confirmation or to set place types.
Using the description from @dlynch and the comment from @Nick-Hall as the prompt, Claude Code came up with a 3-part plan to adress the issues.
First of three phases:
Does that look like it solves the basic frustration?
Talking about customisations, I would very much like to be able to configure which is the default tab in a dialogue, f.x.:
These two changes would save me a lot of clicks. I am not concerned about the sequence of the tabs - only which tab is shown when the dialogue is opened.
mo.eu
If Gramps remembered what the last tab used in a editor, and re-used that next time, would that satisfy the requirement? Iām hoping to cut down on the number of things users have to manually manage too.
It would certainly be a big help, but we would loose predictability in the user interface - I would still need to check that I am on the right tab every time I use the editor.
I donāt see it as a big change in UI - most users could just leave it as it is, which is perfectly usable, whereas the users that would like it could configure it to their liking.
I spend nearly all my time in the relationship view so Iād like that to be enhanced. Some ideas:
Some thoughts on additional names. Iād like to simplify this interface for the common case of adding an alternate name, such as married name, without losing the flexibility of the current system. Maybe a button that adds a new name with the same forenames, but allowing a new married name to be added? I always put citations against names so Iād want to be able to do that too.
The plan is to replace the Relationship view with the Combined view which has a similar design layout but is more compact and has additional functionality.
Ordering of attribute lists. Iād like them to be sorted alphabetically, including custom attributes. This probably applies to many other lists like URL types etc.
Also the type of an association should be a drop down. Currently itās an editable field, but it should work the same as attributes.
When adding an event, it would be nice to be able to have a shortcut to adding the most frequently used events. For me thatās birth/baptism/death/burial/occupation for a person which make up 90% of my events. Perhaps when I click the + button I get a drop down showing my preferred events followed by āOtherā¦ā. Clicking on a named event fills that event type in the new dialog and starts the cursor in the date field. Other just implements the current behaviour.
Maybe there should be a way to favourite event types so they appear on the shortcut menu
Yes, thatās a good way to reduce clicks. Also ensure that windows are designed for keyboard navigation (tabbing between fields in correct order, etc.). See also the discussions Hotkey to select OK button and Key binding to accept changes & close actual window? - #3 by zed.
