I thought so too, but I looked at the old docs and it actually seems they had a specific list of websites/sources it would scrape from (Geves - Where you can download information from ) . You would still have to check the transcription for errors of course but it was probably pretty quick to correct any issues. Then again, expanding this to more than just a few sources would probably be pretty difficult / time consuming.
For me, coming from using Legacy Family Tree to GRAMPS exclusively, The biggest annoyance is the lack of a copy clipboard for events that doesn’t copy the original event, just the details / text. I often want to create new events with small things changed that aren’t shared between people. In Legacy, there is a clipboard icon that you click next to any event and it just copies the data from the event, you can then “paste” to another person and instead of sharing the event it creates a brand new one. Makes entering lots of data from source fast. Its one of the “small changes” I hope to eventually implement when I have the time / my other projects are finished.
Perhaps this idea overlaps with your need, @RenTheRoot? Template objects
Somewhat, but this version of the clipboard is quite a bit simpler, one click to copy and one to paste for speed. But that idea does match up pretty well with my forms template addon and I’ve got it saved as a potential future expansion idea to look into.
Frustration with beginning to use GRAMPS…[1 of ??]
This thread seems to have been somewhat highjacked into advanced topics.
Gramps 6.0.8 on Windows 11.
This once was a VERY long message with painful details. I decided to start over, just as I have started over with GRAMPS from download on - several times. It is still long.
[I have been using software on “windows-like” PCs since the DOS days, have a very good understanding of the Relational Data Model - the main reason for choosing GRAMPS, instead of a program boasting about their more-or-less strict adherence to the archaic GedCom standard, and have more than a basic understanding of Genealogical Research.
As GRAMPS is an acronym for “Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Programming System”, I prefer capital letters, except when quoting.]
First, and not directly related to actual (frustrating) usage, I see GRAMPS as a tool for Family HISTORY of which various forms of family TREE presentation is but a (small?) part. Search for “family history software” and GRAMPS is not in the top 10 or so entries! Yes, it should appear under “family tree software”; It does, in AI section as “Best free, open-source option. Great for tech-savvy users and detailed data tracking”.
Oh oh, “tech-savy”. Scary, but true, especially when starting to use GRAMPS.
GRAMPS itself is not on the first page of a search.
How do I best convey my observations? Does this Discourse group permit attachments? Do I have to reach a certain level of “trust” to be able to do so?
Thank you.
On second thought, I am still confused about date concept, even after decades of usage.
There is no issue on exact dates. But when it comes to record uncertainty, labelling in the Date entry dialog is not obvious at all.
After and From (resp. Before and To) may look equivalent and one will choose preferentially After (resp. Before) because these are used in common language.
However, one word designates an open interval, From and To, while the other highliths only a limited “closed” period of time, Before and After. The latter time-window is defined in Preferences, Limits tab.
I must always think twice before entering a date. And wording is even worse in localised Gramps where translations don’t always emphasise enough the difference.
The prime reason for me hacking the program to use mathematical symbols
<, >, ><, ~
The added benefit being the reduction in screen area taken up in the
likes of GraphView
phil
Please forgive the following rant…
While hand-holding a new user trying switch to Gramps, I was reminded that 1 simple thing burns almost every new Convert:
- the hidden menu item for Importing.
The Import in the Family Trees menu item is HIDDEN unless a tree is loaded.
This interfacing choice (to Hide a feature desired by all refugees) generates an ridiculous amount of unnecessary support traffic.
Dimming the menu item would at least inform users that Gramps actually HAS an Import, give confidence of where the Import ‘lives’ in the interface, and a hint that there is something preventing it being a viable action.
But the Ideal solution is to give inside access to a convenience that Gramps already offers when called from outside. If no tree is loaded, allow Import to use the File Selector ‘open’ to trigger the OS context menu action of “Open with… Gramps”. (Which creates a tree, renames, loads, and imports.)
There has been some heated discussion on this topic.
Some insist that Gramps should force users to become intimately aware that a Tree is the basic working document of Gramps. That such must exist and be ‘loaded’ before Gramps is functional. Or revealing that an “Import” exists as a possibility.
And the Gramps presenting an initial dialog telling the user to load a tree is already clear enough. That their dismissing the Tree dialog (and the “Tip of the Day” dialog) is “a choice” driven by impatience that should not be “rewarded”.
I suspect this ignores that the once-eager potential user has already been battling through multiple Gramps barriers-to-entry for a while. And they are probably fatigued and annoyed by choices and dialogs:
Discovering Gramps exists can be a challenge. Determining which download should be installed often takes multiple tries. Installing has selections where they won’t understand the implications and will be guessing. (Guessing whether their have Sources written in other languages, means those Languages and dictionaries need to be installed too.) The install is a long unpack. Then, when you think you’ll finally get to try Gramps, there’s a dialog confirming that you want to run Gramps after installing.
After that, the initial launch where Gramps builds and caches is long with zero feedback except an empty terminal window. Creating a scare that rumours of Gramps outdated interface means that you’ve installed software with a VT-102 terminal style non-GUI interface. After you’re sure Gramps locked up, the GUI interface appears and there’s 2 more dialogs in the way of seeing it! So you dismiss those and the interface has… nothing of interest to explore. And the menus are bare of options — because these menus aren’t populated until there is a loaded tree… or maybe selected objects.
Since the Example.gramps is buried during install, the only way you can discover if Gramps will work for you is : battle through the dozens of unfamiliar dialogs and correctly creating a family unit.
The school of thought that users must be educated before use also fuels some other hitches in the ‘getting started’ process.
Like how creating a new object in an empty category does not automatically make it the ‘active’ object. Leading to scary “Error: Handle does not exist” messages in the terminal when switching to a category with no object selected.
And errors related to a Home Person not being set. (Shouldn’t there always be a Home Person if any Person object exists?)
-
I really want an option to make double-clicking a media object open the image viewer by default instead of opening the editor. Most of the time when I’m interacting with a media object, I want to view the image, not edit it. Opening the viewer first would match my workflow better and help reduce the number of clicks.
-
In the People and Family Editors, I would love it if clicking the citation icon opened the citation directly rather than opening the Event Editor first, where I then have to click to the Citations tab and click into citation again. Opening the citation directly would remove several unnecessary clicks and make source review much faster.
- The same idea would be useful anywhere linked information is, such as Places and possibly Main Participants as well.
Putting on my stupid head, always wondered why on earth an example tree is not installed as part of the GRAMPS install.
When I was a new user and floundering around having a tree pre installed that I could play with would have been of enormous benefit.
The added bonus being you do not have to change the way the Import button works currently.
phil
The various sample files are included in the Linux and Windows installs (but I have been told that it is not in the macOS install). However, they are buried in file locations that are difficult to access.
That issue (of improving file Accessibility) is discussed earlier in this thread subsection: “More intuitive file locations during install”. There are a lot of options for improving the situation. Some are complementary, some are nontrivial. Further discussion is warranted. (e.g.: add a GTK shortcut during install and Preferences path changes, install to a more accessible location in the User Directory, install as an Addon for easy updating, add support for Importing from a online folder.)
Workaround:
On my 5.2 install, the only Gramps constant that seems to be on the same path as the example/ folder is the LICENSE_FILE file. Which is difficult browsing because of hidden paths. So one of the first things I do is set a Gtk File Chooser bookmark to the Examples folder. Then do the same for the OS File Explorer … with and another to the Plugins folder.
Mac version has the example files in its bundle.
Just did a clean install of 6.0.6-_all.ubuntu-25.10.deb and that also
does not install the sample tree which is why I have never seen it on an
install.
So please add that to the list as well as the Mac OS
phil
Afraid that you are running into the difficulty mentioned. The examples are included and installed, they are just too difficult to find.
Verified by inspection of the download from the v6.0.6 archive. Among the 1,909 files inside the 6.0.6-\_all.ubuntu-25.10.deb Debian package, the dpkg inspection tool discovers all the example files are included.
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2025-11-27 17:02 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2025-11-27 17:02 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gedcom/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 3885 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gedcom/sample.ged.gz
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2025-11-27 17:02 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 27205 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/1897_expeditionsmannschaft_rio_a.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 70873 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/654px-Aksel_Andersson.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 58279 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/Alimehemet.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 65049 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/AntoineClaudet.png
-rw-r--r-- root/root 110203 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/E_W_Dahlgren.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 112835 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/Gunnlaugur_Larusson_-_Yawn.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 296338 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/O0.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 12310 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/O1.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 621930 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/O2.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 417996 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/O3.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 148297 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/O4.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 660730 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/O5.jpg
-rw-r--r-- root/root 12274 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/data.gramps.gz
-rw-r--r-- root/root 421053 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/example.gramps.gz
-rw-r--r-- root/root 1118 2025-11-27 16:12 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/image_credits.md
-rw-r--r-- root/root 15177 2025-11-27 17:02 ./usr/share/doc/gramps/example/gramps/scanned_microfilm.png
Good stuff! SImple fix for new installation: “Do you want to see an example family tree?” Yes/No
Semantics here the files might be buried somewhere in the bundle but that in my terminology is not “installed”. Installed means on first run of GRAMPS the Example tree should be loaded ready to be used.
phil
Yes. This would be a good option for new users.
Nick/Brian
I did/do know where the Example was stored and in fact have it installed
and still it use when I want try something out.
Installing a clean version was just my way of checking what actually
happens during the install process because it is that long since I did
it and paid attention.
It is just 2 clicks to get rid of it for an experienced user, hours of
frustration for a new user to find it even if they knew where to look.
Here’s hoping an implementation might be possible at some time.
To all Developers my thanks for your time and expertise.
phil
Even more simple fix… bundle a tiny sqlite tree database to add into the default grampsdb folder during install. Then that tree will appear in the family tree menu that already appears. Here I’ve added a rough version to an old version of Gramps.
The compressed file is 12.7kb. A ReadMe.txt was added in case the database becomes separated from the Gramps application. And it uses a media object from IMAGE_DIR constant. It also has a ToDo note.
(So if the install could set the relative meda folder for that tree to the IMAGE_DIR value, then there won’t be the broken link annoyance related to installer OS path differences.)
I like the basic idea of having a pre-installed family tree better than asking—then it will always be there! Will be helpful in explanations, debugging, etc.
But the technical details you describe are problematic. In any event, we already ship an example family tree with the installation. We maintain that tree, test it, and add new structures to it. Those can also serve as examples of how to enter data, but also examples of what Gramps looks like with that kind of data. Think places, long/lat with maps, upcoming DNA view, etc. We don’t need to maintain another example tree.