2003 Alex Roitman 2001 Donald N. Allingham GRAMPS Project &legal; Alex Roitman GRAMPS Project

shura@alex.neuro.umn.edu

Donald N. Allingham GRAMPS Project

dallingham@users.sourceforge.net

GRAMPS Manual V&manrevision; &date; Alex Roitman shura@alex.neuro.umn.edu GRAMPS Project GRAMPS User Manual V1.1 2001 Donald N. Allingham dallingham@users.sourceforge.net GRAMPS Project This manual describes version &appversion; of GRAMPS. To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding the &app; application or this manual, follow the directions in the GNOME Feedback Page. GRAMPS gramps The &app; is a genealogical application. &app; is an acronym for the Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Programming System. To put it shortly, it allows you to store, edit, and research genealogical data using your computer. Its functionality is somewhat common to other genealogical programs. However, &app; offers some unique features. &app; was conceived under the concept that most genealogy programs were designed to provide the researcher the capability to input information related to a particular family tree. Most of these programs have allowed for the arranging and storing of information consistent with the GEDCOM standards. They usually provide means for displaying descendant or ancestral relationships by means of graphical displays, charts, or reports. These may be augmented with pictures or other media to enhance the data. Most provide for inputting data on unconnected individuals/families that may or may not have a relationship to the primary surname being researched. Various other enhancements may also be provided in the genealogical program that allows for different degrees of importing and exporting data from other programs and printing the data contained in the various reports. &app;, on the other hand, attempts to provide all of the common capabilities of these programs, but, more importantly, to provide an additional capability of integration not common to these programs. This is the ability to input any bits and pieces of information directly into &app; and rearrange/manipulate any/all data events in the entire data base (in any order or sequence) to assist the user in doing research, analysis and correlation with the potential of filling relationship gaps. In short, a tool that provides a way to input all your research into one place and do your analysis and correlation using the speed, power, and accuracy of your computer instead of pencils and unmanageable reams of paper. You can start &app; in the following ways: Applications menu Choose Other Gramps. Command line To start &app; from a command line, type gramps, then press Return. If you would like &app; to open a specific database or to import a specific file on startup, you can supply the filename as a command line argument: gramps filename.ged where filename.ged is the name of the file you want to open/import. The first time you run the program, GRAMPS will display its Getting Started screens.

Shows Getting Started Window.

If &app; is started without any database to open, the following window will appear prompting you to choose what database to open.

Shows Open Database Window.

If you would like to open an existing database, check the top radio button and click OK. You will then be asked to specify the name of your existing database. If you would like to start creating your brand new database from scratch right away, choose new XML database. If either StandaloneZODB or Zope is installed on your system, &app; will give you the third option of creating a new ZODB database. You can choose to start your new database in either XML or ZODB format. Both formats have their strong and weak points. XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language, and is a human readable sctructured description of data. It could be easily parsed by other programs should the need occur. It stores only the data itself. Its weak point is the relatively low speed of processing large data files. ZODB stands for Zope Object Database and provides the full-fledged database support. ZODB files are not human readable. They contain a certain overhead to assist working with large data structures. However, ZODB provides a significant speed-up when the database size is large (over few thousand people). Its is hard to tell which format is better, since this is a typical tradeoff situation. If you are starting your research then you are likely to be fine with the regular XML database. If you have tons of data to import describing thousands upon thousands of people, then you are probably better of with ZODB. When you open a database (either existing or brand new), the following window is displayed.

Shows &app; main window. Contains titlebar, menubar, toolbar, sidebar, display area, statusbar, progress bar, and scrollbars. Menubar contains File, Edit, View, Bookmarks, Reports, Tools, Settings, and Help menus.

The &app; window contains the following elements: Menubar. The menubar provides access to all features of &app; through its menus. Toolbar. The toolbar provides access to the most frequently used functions of &app;. The appearance of the toolbar can be adjusted in <Preferences dialog. Progress bar. The progress bar is located in the lower left corner of the &app; window. It displays the progress of time consuming operations, such as opening and saving large data bases, importing and exporting to other formats, generating web-sites, etc. Statusbar. The statusbar is located to the right of the progress bar, on the very bottom of the &app; window. It displays information about current &app; activity and contextual information about the menu items. The behavior of the Status line can be adjusted in Preferences dialog. Display area. The largest are in the center of the &app; window is the display area. It shows certain aspects of genealogical information, depending on the currently selected View. There are six Views available in &app;: , , , , , and . Views are the various ways to display different aspects of genealogical information, as described below. Since the relevant information is very broad and non-uniform in both context and modality, it is best to split it's display into smaller categories, uniform in context and modality. Each View represents such a split and displays a certain portion of overall available information. Before the detailed description of available Views, let us guide you through the ways of switching between the Views. Depending on the state of the View Sidebar menu item, the View could be switched either in the sidebar or in the notebook tabs in the top part of the window. To switch the View, click on the desired sidebar icon or the notebook tab. To switch between sidebar and notebook viewing modes, choose View Sidebar from the &app; menu.

Shows sidebar viewing mode.

Shows tabbed viewing mode.

When &app; opens a database, the View is set to the People View. People View lists individuals whose data is stored in the database. People View displays people's Names, &app; ID numbers, Gender, and their Birth and Death dates. The list can be ordered by any field. Example: to order list by the Birth date, click on the Birth date column heading. To order list in reverse (descending) order, click one more time on the desired column heading. Genealogical databases may contain huge numbers of people. Since the long lists are hard for humans to handle, &app; provides a convenient way to limit the scope of browsing by using the Filter. To save screen space, Filter controls may be hidden, depending on the state of View Filter menu item.

Shows filter controls.

When &app; opens a database, the Filter is set to the trivial filter called All people, i.e. no filtering is in effect. To choose a filter, use a pop-up Filter menu above the people's list. Once the Filter is chosen, click Apply in the upper right corner of the window. The filtering will take effect upon clicking Apply. To invert the filtering rule, check the Invert box on the left of Apply button. Example: To show people without children, choose People with children filter, then check Invert box, and then click Apply. To cancel any filtering, set the filter to All people and then click Apply. Note: even if the Filter controls are not displayed ( View Filter menu item is unchecked), the filtering might still be in place. In other words, the visibility of the Filter controls is not related to the actual filtering imposed on the list. This may be a cause of confusion, when you enable the filtering and then remove the controls from the display. If in doubt, enable the display of Filter controls by checking View Filter menu item and check what kind of filtering is currently set. &app; offers another way of managing long lists of people -- alphabetical tabs. Upon loading a database, &app; checks for the stored Family names and breaks the people list into sublists based on the first letter of their name. The alphabetical tabs are displayed in the bottom part of the &app; window. The last tab, "Other," stands for unidentified characters -- all the entries not assigned to any other tab end up in "Others." Family View displays the Family information of a currently selected (or Active) person. Specifically, this view shows the relationships (e.g marriages, partnerships, etc.) of the active person, his/her parents (or step parents, or guardians, etc), and his/her children (could be step children, adopted children, etc.).

Shows Family View.

The Active person's data is in the list-box in the upper left corner of the window. Directly below it, another box lists the Spouse's data, for each relationship of Active person (can be more than one). The double-arrow button to the right of the Active person list-box allows to exchange the currently selected spouse (Current spouse) with the Active person. Double-clicking on the Active person allows to edit Active person's data. Double-clicking on the Current spouse allows to edit their relationship information. To add a spouse, click + to the right of the spouse box. To remove Current spouse, click - to the right of the spouse box. The parents of both the Active person and the Current spouse are listed in the corresponding list-boxes in the right-hand part of the window (Active person's parents on top, Current spouse parents on the bottom). Both list-boxes have a set of three buttons on their right side. The + and - buttons allow to add and remove parents of the Active person and the Current spouse, respectively. Clicking -> makes the family in the corresponding list-box and active family. That is, it makes the selected Father the Active person, and the selected Mother the Current spouse. The bottom list-box displays children of the Active person and the Current Spouse. Children's list can be order by the Birth date, by usual way of clicking on the Birth date column header. In addition to the Name, ID, Gender, and Birth date columns, the list includes Status column. The pair of status words reflect the relationship between the child and his Father/Mother (such as Birth, Adoption, etc.) The three buttons are available on the right side of the children list-box. The + and + buttons allow to add and remove children, respectively. Pressing <- makes the selected child the Active person. Pedigree View helps to visualize the place of the Active person in the tree of its ancestors. Pedigree View shows four generations, going back in time from the Active person 1 to his/her parents 1, to grandparents 1, to great-grandparents 1. Each person is denoted by a white box bearing the person's name. The two lines that converge on the box represent ties with the person's Father (top line) and mother (bottom line). Solid lines represent birth relations, while dashed lines represent non-birth relations (such as adoption, step-parentship, guardianship, etc.). When the mouse moves over the white box, it expands to display the corresponding person's dates of birth and death. When the mouse is placed over the family line, the line changes color to indicate an active link: double-clicking on the line makes the corresponding ancestor the Active person. The display in that case is re-adjusted to show four generations, starting from a newly selected Active person. The left-hand side of the window shows the left arrow button. Upon clicking, the button expands to the menu listing the children of the Active person. Selecting the menu item makes the corresponding child the Active person. The right-hand side of the window shows two right arrow buttons. When the top button is clicked, the Father of the Active person becomes Active person. Clicking the bottom button makes the Mother of the Active person the Active person. Again, the display is re-adjusted to show four generations, starting from a newly selected Active person. Sources View lists the sources of information stored in the database. This can include various documents (birth, death, and marriage certificates, etc.), books, films, journals, private diaries, i.e. virtually anything that can be classified as a source of information. The sources can be used as the reference for any event stored in the database. The Source View lists the Title, ID, and the Author of the source. All the columns can be used for sorting the list. The usual rules apply: one click for ascending order, another click for descending order. Places View lists the geographical places in which the events of the database took place. These could be places of birth, death, marriages of people, as well as their home, employment, education addresses, or any other conceivable reference to the geographical location. The Places View lists places' Name, ID, Church Parish, City, County, State, and Country. All of these can be used for sorting by the usual sorting rules. Media View is a list of Media Objects used in the database. Media Objects are any files that relate somehow to the stored genealogical data. Technically, any file can be stored as a Media Object. Most frequently, these are images, audio files, animation files, etc. The list-box on the bottom lists the Name, ID, Type, and Path to the Media Object. The top part of the GRAMPS window shows the preview (if available) and the information about the Media Object. As commonly encountered in everyday life, in &app; there is usually more than one way to accomplish something. The alternatives to some actions will therefore be listed as appropriate. To open a database, either choose FileOpen or click Open button on the Toolbar. The Open Database dialog will appear. Either type the full path into the Database text entry field, or press Browse... to get the Open File dialog in which you can select the file that you want to open. After you have selected the file, click OK to open it. If you have previously opened files with &app; you can retreive your past selections from the drop-down menu by clicking the down arrow button. Finally, if the Revision Control System (RCS) is enabled in the Preferences dialog, the check-box Revert to an older version from RCS will be available. Check it to revert your database to an older RCS version. Note: the name you type or select should be the directory (folder) which has your data (data.gramps or data.zodb files) as well as any possible copies of Media Objects. To start a new database, choose File New. You will then be prompted with the Save Database dialog asking to specify the name under which the new database will be stored. Choose an empty directory for your new database (create one if necessary). To save changes made to your database, choose File Save or click Save on the Toolbar. The Status line will then display Saving filename... message, and the progress bar will advance as the saving progresses. Importing GEDCOM data allows you to incorporate the data created in other genealogical programs into your currently open &app; database. &app; can import GEDCOM data files from a number of software packages, as long as they comply with GEDCOM standards. To import GEDCOM file, choose File ImportImport from GEDCOM. You will then be prompted with the Open File dialog asking to specify the GEDCOM file name. Upon starting the import, &app; will display the following GEDCOM import dialog with the summary of the information about the data. The information is updated as the import progresses.

Shows GEDCOM Import Window.

Exporting GEDCOM data allows you to share any portion of you &app; database with other researchers by way of standard GEDCOM files. To export into GEDCOM file, choose File Export Export to GEDCOM. The following Export GEDCOM file dialog will appear.

Shows Export GEDCOM File dialog

Type the desired GEDCOM filename into the text entry box or click Browse... to evoke Save File dialog. Use Filter popup menu to limit the scope of export according to the stated rule. Choose the desired Encoding of the exported file. Use Target to select the desired GEDCOM dialect. Select you copyright statement from the Copyright menu. Check Do not include records marked private to disable the output of private records. Check Restrict data on living people to Upon starting the export, &app; will display the following GEDCOM export progress window with the progress bars reflecting the current state of exporting.

Shows Export GEDCOM progress dialog.

&app; provides a way to make your &app; database completely portable. This might prove useful, for instance, when you need to move your database to another machine or to share it with somebody, while retaining all the features provided by &app;. To accomplish this, choose File Export Export to GRAMPS Package. The GRAMPS Package Export window will appear. Type the desired package name into the text entry area or click Browse... to select the file using the Save File dialog. The resulting package is gzip-compressed tar archive (also known as tarball) which contains gramps database, all local media objects, and copies of all external media objects. To import such package into your &app; database, choose File Import Import from GRAMPS. Select a package to be imported from Import from GRAMPS dialog. To configure &app;, choose Settings Preferences. The Preferences dialog contains the following sections seen as the corresponding tree elements: &app; was written by Donald N. Allingham (dallingham@users.sourceforge.net). To find more information about &app;, please visit the GRAMPS Project Web page. To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding this application or this manual, follow the directions in this document. This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public license as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. A copy of this license can be found at this link, or in the file COPYING included with the source code of this program.