2001 Donald N. Allingham Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license can be found here. Many of the names used by companies to distinguish their products and services are claimed as trademarks. Where those names appear in any GNOME documentation, and those trademarks are made aware to the members of the GNOME Documentation Project, the names have been printed in caps or initial caps. This is version 1.0 of the gramps manual. gramps is an acronym for the Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Programming System. It 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 a 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 of the data contained in the various reports. gramps, on the other hand, attempts to provide all of the common capabilities of these programs, but, more importantly, to provide a capability not common to these programs. This is the ability to input any bits and pieces of information directly into gramps 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. To run gramps, select Programs Applications gramps from the Main Menu, or type gramps on the command line. This document describes version &version; of gramps. The first time you run the program, gramps will display its Getting Started screens.

Getting Started screen, page 1

The second page of the start up screens will prompt you for some personal information. This information is optional, and can be changed at any time. The information will be used to establish your copyright on the information, and to provide information needed for valid GEDCOM exporting.

Getting Started screen, page 2

Starting gramps opens the Main window, shown in . The window is at first empty.

gramps Main Window

If you already have a family file created using another genealogy program you can import your GEDCOM file into Gramps. To do this you select File Import Import from GEDCOM . The GEDCOM Import box will open. Select New Database and click the Browse... button to select your saved GEDCOM file (filename.ged). Click OK to select the file and then click OK to import the file. The GEDCOM Import Status will tell you what the importer is doing and a little bit about your file (file location, what program it was created by, the version, Encoding, Number of Families, Number of People, and the Number of Errors). Once the Importer is done, you can click close and start editing/adding to your file. If you have never used a genealogy program or you do not have a GEDCOM file to import you can start creating your database right away. From the main window click the Add Person button and the Edit Person dialog will open. Start entering in the information you have on the first person. Start with their general information (Name, Birth and Death Date/Place) and then move on to the Names, Events, Attributes, Addresses, Notes, Gallery, and Internet tabs and fill in the known information you have. Some of the information you enter has a Source button and/or a Note button. These buttons are there to add more information (Source button to add the source of where you got the information and the Note button to add more detail to the information) The People View window is the initial view seen on the main window. It displays the name, gender, birth date, and death date of all individuals in the database. At any time, you can return to the this view either by pressing the People button at the top of the screen, or by choosing the View People entry from the menus.

People View

The People View lists the individuals in the database. An in dividual can be selected as the active person by clicking on an entry in the list. Once a person has been selected as the active person, the person's name appears in the status bar in the lower left hand corner of the window. Once the active person has been selected, pressing the Edit Person button will display the Edit Person dialog allowing you to edit the individual's personal information. If the Edit Person button is pressed without an active person being set, a blank Edit Person dialog is presented, allowing you to enter a new person. Double-clicking on a entry in the list will set the active person and bring up the individual in the Edit Person dialog. Pressing the Add Person button will display a blank Edit Person dialog, allowing you to add a new person to the database. If the Delete Person button is pressed, the active person and all of the personal information related to the active person are removed from the database. gramps allows you to apply filters to the People View. When a filter is applied, the People View will only display the entries matching the filter. All of the entries remain in the database, but are temporarily hidden. There are three parts to a filter. The first part is the selection of the filter to be applied. A filter is selected from the option menu directly above the People View. The second part is an option qualifier. This qualifier provides more specific information for the filter. Many filters do not require the qualifier, and it will be grayed out if not needed. The third part of the filter is the invert selection. When this option is selected, gramps will display the entries that do not match the filter. A filter is not applied until the Apply button is pressed. The filter will remain in effect until the next time the Apply button is pressed. Four columns are shown in the People View display. The entries in the list can be sorted by three of the fields: Name, Birth Date, or Death Date. Clicking on the column label will cause the list to be resorted by that column. Arrows on the label indicate whether the list is sort by ascending or descending order. If the list is already sorted by a particular column, clicking on the same column label will switch sorting order. For example, if the list is currently sorted in ascending order by Name, clicking on the Name column header will resort the list in descending order. A person's personal information can be edited in the Edit Person dialog.

General Information Tab

The General Information tab contains the basic information about the person. This includes the person's name, gender, birth informaton, and death informaton. If images have been associated with the person, the primary image is displayed on the right side of the window.

Alternate Names Tab

Its possible for people to use more than one name during their lifetime. These may be legal names changes, or just informal names. Examples would be a person changing his or her name due to marriage or adoption. gramps allows multiple alternate names to be specified for each person. The Alternate Names tab allows additional names to be added or removed from list. Clicking the Add allows a new name to be added to the list. The Edit/View allows the selected alternate name to be edited. The Delete removes the selected name. The Events tab allows information about various events in a person's life to be recorded. gramps provides a list of common events, but allows you to name an event anything that you want. An event consists of a name of an event (such as "Baptism" or "Education"), a date or date range on which the event occurred, the place where the event occurred, and a description of the event. A note or a source may also be attached to the event. Events have the concept of privacy and confidence associated with them. An event may be marked as "Private". When generating reports or exporting to other formats, you will be allowed to either include or exclude private records. This will allow you to limit information provided to others. gramps allows you to specify your confidence in the information you have. By default, a confidence level of "Normal" is associated with each event. This can be changed either up ("High" or "Very High") or down ("Low" or "Very Low") to indicate the confidence you have in the information. For example, if Aunt Martha thinks that her grandmother was born in a particular year, you may wish to mark this with a lower level of confidence than if you had a copy of her grandmother's birth certificate.

Events Tab

The Event tab displays information about the currently selected event at the top of the window. Below this information is a list of the events that have been previously entered. Clicking on one of the events in the list selects the event, and displays its information at the top of the window. An event may be added by by clicking the Add button. This displays a form which allows you to enter the information about the particular event. The Edit/View button allows to view or alter the information of the currently displayed event. The Delete button allows you to delete the currently displayed event. Attributes are similar to events, but are for information items that do not necessary have the concept of a place or a date. An example would be person's Social Security Number or National origin. Attributes consist of an attribute name and its value. Like events, attributes may also have a note, source, privacy marker, and confidence level associated with them.

Attributes Tab

The Attribute tab displays information about the currently selected attribute at the top of the window. Below this information is a list of the attributes that have been previously entered. Clicking on one of the attributes in the list selects the attribute, and displays its information at the top of the window. An attribute may be added by by clicking the Add button. This displays a form which allows you to enter the information about the particular attribute. The Edit/View button allows to view or alter the information of the currently displayed attribute. The Delete button allows you to delete the currently displayed attribute. Addresses are used to record information about where a person has lived. Addresses are different from gramps' concept of a place. A address as gramps sees it consists of an equivalent of a mailing address and the date or date range when the person lived at the address. Like events and attributes, addresses may also have a note, source, privacy marker, and confidence level associated with them.

Addresses Tab

The Address tab displays information about the currently selected address at the top of the window. Below this information is a list of the addresses that have been previously entered. Clicking on one of the addresses in the list selects the address, and displays its information at the top of the window. An address may be added by by clicking the Add button. This displays a form which allows you to enter the information about the particular address. The Edit/View button allows to view or alter the information of the currently displayed address. The Delete button allows you to delete the currently displayed address. In addition to the notes that may be attached to any particular event, attribute, or address, gramps has a generic note attached to the person.

Notes Tab

The note window is a free-form edit window, allowing you to enter any information that you want. Photographs and images are stored in the Gallery tab. Images of a wide variety of formats are stored, including JPEG and PNG. gramps can either refer to an existing file, or make its own copy. By default, gramps will make its own copy. There are advantages and disadvatages to both approaches. Refering to an external copy reduces disk space. Allowing gramps to make its own copy eliminates allows gramps to still have the image if the orignal is altered, deleted, or moved. It also simplifies the transfer of a database from one machine to another.

Gallery Tab

The first image in the gallery is considered to be the primary image. This image will appear on the General Information tab, and will be the image used by report generators. An image can be made the default at any time by selecting the image, and clicking on the Make Prmimary button. Images may be added by clicking the Add button, and deleted by clicking the Delete button. If the image is a reference to another file, gramps will remove the reference to the file. If the file is a copy maintained by gramps, then gramps will remove the file from the file system. Right clicking on an selected image brings up a menu. View Image Allows you to view the image using the GNOME's default viewer for the file type. Edit Image Launches the gimp program, allowing you to edit the image. Edit Description Allows you to change the description attached to the image. Convert to private copy This option is only displayed if the image is a reference to a file that is not controlled by gramps. Selecting the option causes gramps to make its own copy of the image. Frequently, information about a person is available on the internet, frequently on someone else's web site. With multiple people researching the same family, is desirable to keep track of internet sites that contain information about someone in your database. This allows you to keep track of the web sites you you can periodically check them for any addition information.

Internet Tab

The Internet tab displays information about the currently selected internet address at the top of the window. Below this information is a list of the internet address that have been previously entered. Clicking on one of the events in the list selects the event, and displays its information at the top of the window. Clicking on the internet address displayed at the top part of the window will cause gramps to attempt to display the site using the GNOME default browser. An internet address may be added by by clicking the Add button. This displays a form which allows you to enter the information about the internet address. This information consists of the web address (URL) and a description of the location. The Edit/View button allows to view or alter the information of the currently displayed internet address. The Delete button allows you to delete the currently displayed internet address. The Family View window displays the spouses, parents, and children of the active person. At any time, you can return to the this view either by pressing the Family button at the top of the screen, or by choosing the View Family View entry from the menus.

Family View

In the Family View, the family information related to the active person is displayed. This information falls into two categories: families in which the person is a child, and families in which person is a spouse or parent. On the right hand side of the window displays the parents of the active person. By default, a birth relationship is assumed. gramps supports multiple family relationships for each person. For example, a person may have natural birth parents and adopted parents. In this case, an option menu will appear below the parents names, allowing you to choose which set of parents you which to view. Pressing the Add/Edit Parents allows you to choose the active person's parents and specify the person's relationship to the parents. Pressing the Delete Parents does not remove the parents from the database, but instead deletes the relationship between the active person and the currently displayed parents. To right of the names of the parents are two "arrow" buttons. Selecting the button next to the father changes the father to the active person, and displays the fathers information in the Family View window. Similarly, selecting the button next to the mother changes the mother to the active person. To the left of the parents' names are buttons indicating the relationship to the active person. These are typically labeled "Father" and "Mother", but in some cases may simply be labeled "Parent". Pressing one of these buttons will display the Edit Person for the corresponding person. On the left side of the window, below the active person's name, is the information related to the person's marriages and relationships. If the person has one or no relationships, the spouse will appear within a non-editable text box. If more that one relationships exist, the text box will be replaced with an option menu that allows you to select the relationship to view. Between the active person and the relationship information is a button with two arrows. Pressing this button will exchange the active person and spouse on the display. The currently displayed spouse will become the active person, and the family information on the right hand side of the screen will change to reflect this. Pressing the Spouse next to the spouse's name will display the currently displayed spouse's information in an Edit Person dialog, allowing you change the information Pressing the Add located below the entry for the spouse's name allows a new relationship to be added. This gives you the opportunity to select and existing person or to add a new person as the new spouse. The type of relationship can also be specified. All relationship types, except "Partners" require that the spouses be of opposite sex. The "Partners" relationship type requires that the spouses be of the same sex. Pressing the Edit button allows you to edit the information related to the marriage. The information includes events, attributes, and images. The Remove button removes the current spouse from the relationship. If no children exist in the relationship, the entire relationship is removed. If children exist in the relationship, the the current spouse is removed, and the children remain in a family with active person as the only parent. The bottom of the window contains the list of children related to the active person and the currently selected spouse. Clicking on an entry in the list makes that child the active child. Clicking the Add New Child creates a new child and adds him or her as a child of the current relationship. Clicking the Add Existing Child allows you to select an existing person and assign the person as a child of the current relationship. Clicking the Remove Child removes the active child from the current relationship, but does not delete the person from the database. Double clicking on a entry in the list brings up the Edit Person dialog for the child. You are able to make the selected child the active person by clicking the arrow button next to the child list. The highlighted child in the child list becomes the active person. The Pedegree View window displays the active person, the active person's parents, and the active parent's grandparents in a somewhat graphical manner. At any time, you can return to the this view either by pressing the Pedegree button at the top of the screen, or by choosing the View Pedgree entry from the menus.

Pedegree View

FIXME: This section should describe the pedegree view. The Source View window displays the different sources which have been entered into the database. At any time, you can return to the this view either by pressing the Sources button at the top of the screen, or by choosing the View Sources entry from the menus.

Source View

From this screen you are able to Add, Edit, and Delete sources. The Place View window displays the different sources which have been entered into the database. At any time, you can return to the this view either by pressing the Places button at the top of the screen, or by choosing the View Places entry from the menus.

Place View

From this screen you are able to Add, Edit, and Delete places. gramps supports two mechanisms to quickly find people - the home person and bookmarks. The home person is the default person of the database. Upon loading the database, gramps will set the active person to the default person. At any time, clicking the Home button will return the active person to the home person. The home person can be set by choosing Settings Set Default Person . Bookmarks work similar to bookmarks in HTML browsers. They allow you to quickly jump to a person, making that person the active person. This allows you to avoid searching for them everytime you want to add/change something in their information. Choosing Bookmarks Add Bookmark adds the current active person to the bookmark list. The person will then appear in the bookmark list, allowing you to quickly select the person. Choosing Bookmarks Edit Bookmarks displays a dialog box that allows you to reorder or delete bookmarks in the list. To change the application settings, select Settings Preferences... . This opens the Preferences dialog, shown in .

Preferences Dialog

The General Preferences tab contains basic information to control the operation of gramps. Automatically load last database With this selected it will automatically load your last database. Do not compress XML data file gramps normally compresses its data file to conserve disk space. If you do not which to have the file compressed, selecting this option will cause gramps to leave the file uncompressed. This may be desirable if other applications need to process the generated XML file. Use tabbed pages When this is selected there will be a row of tabs below the tool bars for the Person View, Family Fiew, Pedigree View, and Sources View. Display gramps ID in list This will add a new column to the Person View with the Gramps ID for each individual. Display attribute on Edit Person form Selecting this and adding a comment/word will add that comment/word to the Identification part of the Edit Person view.

Formats Tab

The Formats tab allows you to change the display formats of several different typs of data. This includes dates and names. Display Formats Allows you to choose your preferences for displaying dates and names. Options exist for several different date formats. Names can be displayed with either the given name or the surname first. This option typically does not affect lists which are sorted by last name, in which case the surname is displayed first. Entry Formats Numerical date formats can be ambiguous. Some people enter the day, month, and year (European style), while others prefer month, day, year (American style). Selecting the option here informs gramps how it should interpret numerical dates.

Appearence Preferences Dialog

Custom Colors Enabling custom colors allows you to choose foreground and background colors for the Person View list. A different color combinations may be chosen for odd and even rows. This may make the display easier to read. It should be noted that it may slow down redisplays of the window if a large number (thousands) of people are in the list. Status Bar Allows you can change the information displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the window. There are three (3) preferences you can chose from. The first is Active person's name only - this will display the active person's name only in the status bar. The second is Active person's name and gramps ID - This will display the name and ID for the active person ( [I9] Edwin Michael Smith ). The last option is Active person's name and attribute - this is just like the second option but shows the attribute you specified in the General Preferences section. List Display Options Allows to control what gets displayed in lists. You can control if alternate names are displayed in the lists, or if the lists will contain detail flags to indicate additional information (such as the presense of notes, sources, or images).

Researcher Information Dialog

This is where you are able to change the information you entered when you started gramps for the first time and was asked to enter in some information. (This information shows up in your GEDCOM files as being the researcher/author of the file)

Report Preferences Dialog

Many of the reports that gramps produces can be generated in different file formats and different paper sizes. Selecting a Preferred Output Format and a Preferred Output Format tells the report generator your preferences. It should be noted that a report generator may not support all possible formats.

Directory Preferences Dialog

This allows you to set the default directory for your database, reports, and Web Sites. gramps can produce a wide variety of reports. New report generators can be written by the user without modifying the main program. For this reason, there may be more reports available than are documented by this manual

Report Generation Dialog

Unlike many genealogy programs, gramps does not directly print reports. Instead, gramps produces reports in formats that are understood by other programs. These formats include OpenOffice, AbiWord, PDF, and HTML, among others. This allows the generated reports to be modified after they are generated, stored for use later, or emailed to another person. After selecting the report you would like generated there are option you must select. In the Save As option specify your file name (use /full path/filename to specify a different directory than in your Default Report Directory preference in the preferences). The next step is to select the Report Format. After choosing the Format you can select the style you would like to use for your report (this does not apply to the HTML format). You can Add/Edit/Delete a style for that particular report by clicking the Style Editor button. Selecting one of those options you can then change the font (font face, size, color, and options) for each Paragraph Style along with the Paragraph Options (Alignment, background color, margins, and morders). Once you are satisfied with the style you are ready to proceed with the generation of your report. The next step is to choose the options (if any for that specific report) and then Choose the Templete (for HTML format only) and click OK. Your report will now be in default report directory (unless otherwise specified) for you to view the program you specified the report to be generated for. Many programs exist to convert GEDCOM files into HTML files that can be viewed in a web browser. Most of these programs generate HTML files according to their own predefined style. Since most people have a style that they prefer, they are left with the option of modifying hundreds of files by hand. To solve this problem, gramps allows the user to specify a template to be used for generating HTML files. At the time the report is generated, if HTML is selected as the target format, the user can select an HTML template to be used. Since the template is chosen at report generation time, a different template may be chosen each time, allowing the user to change the appearence of the generated files at any time. Nearly any existing HTML file can be used as an HTML template for gramps. When a file has been established as the HTML template file, gramps uses the template for each file that it generates. gramps starts each file by copying data from the template until it reaches an HTML comment uses as a marker. At that point, gramps inserts its data into the output file. gramps the continues reading the until it reaches a second comment that tells it to resume copying from the template. gramps uses the string <!-- START --> to indicate where it should start inserting its information, and the string <!-- STOP --> to indicate where it should resume copying data from the template. The effect is that gramps will create a new document, replacing everything between the <!-- START --> and <!-- STOP --> comments with the report information. The comment markers should be at the beginning of a line in the HTML template file. Adding the comments to an existing HTML document will not affect the original HTML document in any way. If no HTML template is specified, or if the specified template cannot be read, gramps will use a default, predefined template.

<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE> This is my Title </TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <P> This is a simple template. This text will appear in the html output. </P> <!-- START --> <P> This is where gramps will place its report information. Any information between the two comments, including this paragraph, will not appear in the gramps generated output. </P> <!-- STOP --> <P> This text, since it appears after the stop comment, will also appear in every gramps generated file. </P> </BODY> </HTML>

gramps supports standard and user written tools. These tools can operate on the database to perform a specified task.

Tool Selection Dialog

Compare individual events — Aids in the analysis of data by allowing the development of custom filters that can be applied to the database to find similar events. Interactive descendant browser — Provides a browsable hierarchy based on the active person. Check and repair database — Checks the database for integrity problems, fixing the problems that it can. Extract information from names — Searches the entire database and attempts to extract titles and nicknames that may be embedded in a person's given name field. Merge people — Searches the entire database, looking for individual entries that may represent the same person. Rename personal event types — Allows all the events of a certain name to be renamed to a new name. Reorder gramps ID's — Reorders the gramps ID's according to gramps' default rules. Generate SoundEx codes — Generates SoundEx codes for names. Relationship calculator — Calulates the relationship between two people. gramps was written by Don Allingham (dallingham@users.sourceforge.net). To find more information about gramps, please visit the gramps Web page. This manual was written by Don Allingham (donaldallingham@home.com), Larry Allingham (llkla@erinet.com), and Shawn Ann Griffith (shawnann1@home.com). This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it 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. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. A copy of the GNU General Public License is included as an appendix to the GNOME Users Guide. You may also obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License from the Free Software Foundation by visiting their Web site or by writing to

Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place - Suite 330 Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA