Generating Reports

Reports are the most common form of the output produced by genealogical research. The majority of genealogical software puts a lot of emphasis on developing nice looking reports. GRAMPS is no exception in this regard, offering a choice of a variety of reports. GRAMPS can generate reports in a multitude of open formats, both text based and graphical. GRAMPS can also produce screen based reports that are convenient for viewing a summary of your database. Finally, GRAMPS can generate a web site suitable for immediate posting on the Internet. All of these are almost infinitely flexible. If you wish to modify or extend the default format of GRAMPS report, you can design and choose the style for each of your reports.

All reports can be accessed through the menu by choosing ReportsReport TypeParticular Report. Alternatively, you can browse the complete selection of available reports along with their brief descriptions in a Report Selection dialog invoked by clicking the Reports icon on the toolbar.

Substitution Values

Many of the graphical reports allow you to customize the information on the display. Variable substitutions are used to substitute date for a particular symbol. There are two styles of variables. The difference between the two styles is how empty data is handled.

The first style of variables are preceded by a '$'. If the variable evaluates to an empty string, the variable is replaced with the empty string. The second style of variables are preceded by a '%'. If the variable evaluates to an empty string, the line that contains the variable is removed from the output.

$n/%n

Displays the person's name in the form of FirstName LastName

$N/%N

Displays the person's name in the form of LastName, FirstName

$i/%i

Displays the GRAMPS ID associated with the person.

$b/%b

Displays the person's date of birth

$B/%B

Displays the person's place of birth

$d/%d

Displays the person's date of death

$D/%D

Displays the person's place of death

$s/%s

Displays the name of the person's preferred spouse in the form of FirstName LastName

$S/%S

Displays the name of the person's preferred spouse in the form of LastName, FirstName.

$m/%m

Displays the marriage date of the person and the preferred spouse.

$M/%M

Displays the place associated with the marriage of the person and the preferred spouse.

Books

Currently, the only available report under this category is the Book Report.

The Book Report creates a single document (i.e. a Book) containing a collection of graphical and textual reports. Consequently, this allows for a very rich set of documents that GRAMPS can produce.

When Book Report is selected, the following book configuration dialog appears:

Figure 3.34. Book Report dialog

Shows Book Report dialog.

The Book name text entry field is used to save the book (a set of configured selections) for future use. The top pane lists the items available for inclusion in the book. The bottom pane lists the currently selected items in the order they will appear in the book.

The horizontal set of buttons by the Book name field operates on the whole book. Click the Clear button to clear all items from the current book. Click the Save button to save the current book (under the name typed in the Book name text entry field) for future use.

[Tip]Tip

Saving the book also saves the configuration for each item.

Click the Open button to load the book from the list of previously saved books. Finally, click the Edit books button to invoke the editable list of available books.

The vertical set of buttons to the right of the bottom pane operates on the selected book item. Click the Add button to add selected item from the available list to the current book. Click the Remove button to remove an item from the current book. Use Up and Down to change the items order in the current book. Click the Setup button to configure the options of the selected item of the current book.

The configuration dialogs invoked by Setup are item-specific. If you choose not to configure the item, same defaults will be used for all needed options. The common option for almost all book items is the center person: the person on whom the item is centered. Thanks to this option, you can create a book with items centered on different people (e.g. your mom's and dad's ancestors as separate chapters). By default, the center person is set to the Active Person.

Almost all items available for inclusion in the book are textual or graphical reports, and are therefore available in the form of standalone reports. The exception is the following items which are only available as book items:

Title Page

This item produces a customized Title page. You can configure the text of title, subtitle, and the footer of the page. An image can be optionally placed between the subtitle and the footer. Because of its configurability, this item can be used to create title pages for the whole book, its chapter, or even a single item.

Custom Text

This item produces a page with three paragraphs, each containing custom text. The appearance of the text can be adjusted by using custom styles. This item was meant to be used for epigraphs, dedications, explanations, notes, and so forth.

Code Generators

This category contains reports that produce files that are meant to be processed by other programs. By themselves, the files will not provide meaningful information; the files must first be processed by another program. The only code generator currently available in GRAMPS is the Relationship Graph producing the GraphViz description of the graph.

The Relationship Graph creates a complex relationship graph in GraphViz format. The GraphViz dot tool can transform the graph into postscript, jpeg, png, vrml, svg, and other formats. GraphViz tools are freely available from the GraphViz site. Specific options for this report include filter and number of generations considered, as well as several GraphViz-specific options related to pagination, color, and details of the graph.

[Tip]Tip

If you are not interested in GraphViz code itself and just want to generate graphical output, GRAMPS can do it for you under the hood. Look for Relationship Graph in the Graphical Reports category, the section called “Graphical Reports”

Graphical Reports

Graphical reports represent information in forms of charts and graphs. Most of the options are common among graphical reports, therefore they will be described only once, at the end of this section. The few options which are specific to a given report will be described directly in that report's entry.

The following graphical reports are currently available in GRAMPS:

Ancestor Chart

This report generates the chart of people who are ancestors of the Active Person. Specific options include the number of generations considered and the format of the displayed entries.

Ancestor Chart (Wall Chart)

This report is similar to the Ancestor Chart report. It provides more options which make it useful for generating huge charts suitable for a poster or a wall chart. These options include the ability to compress the report (getting rid of an empty space) and the option to fit the whole chart on to a single page. In the latter case, the contents of the chart is scaled down appropriately.

Descendant Graph

This report generates a graph of people who are descendants of the Active Person. Specific options include the format of the displayed entries.

Fan Chart

This report produces a chart resembling a fan, with Active person in the center, parents the semicircle next to it, grandparents in the next semicircle, and so on, for a total of five generations.

Relationship Graph

This report creates a complex relationship graph in GraphViz format and then converts into graphical output running it through the GraphViz dot tool behind the scene. Specific options for this report include filter, options for dates and places for the events, and whether to include URLs and IDs for individuals and families. There are also several GraphViz-specific options related to pagination, color, and details of the graph.

Statistics Chart

This report can collect and display a wealth of statistical data about your database. Specific options include filter, sorting methods, and additional birth- and gender-based limit for inclusion into statistics. You can also set the minimum number of items to qualify for the bar chart, so that the charts with fewer items will generate a pie chart instead. The Chart Selection tab allows you to check which charts you want to include in your report.

Timeline Graph

This report outputs the list of people with their lifetimes represented by intervals on a common chronological scale. Specific options include filter, sorting method, and the title of the report.

Common options for graphical reports are the filename of the output, the format of the output, selected style, page size and orientation. Optionally, the reports can be immediately opened with the default application.

[Tip]Tip

The options used in reports are persistent: each report remembers its options used last time.

Text Reports

Text reports represent the desired information as formatted text. Most of the options are common among text reports, therefore they will be described only once, at the end of this section. The options which are specific to a given report will be described directly in that report's entry.

The following text reports are currently available in GRAMPS:

Ahnentafel Report

This report lists the Active Person and his or her ancestors along with their vital data. The people are numbered in a special way which is an established standard called Ahnentafel. The Active Person is given number 1. His or her father and mother have numbers 2 and 3, respectively. This rule holds for every person while going back in generations: father's parents are numbered 4 and 5, and mother's parents are numbered 6 and 7, fathers always numbered with even and mothers with odd numbers. Therefore, for any person having number N in this tree, the numbers of father and mother are 2N and 2N+1, respectively.

Complete Individual Report

This report provides individual summaries similar to that of the Individual Summary report. The advantage of this report is the specific filter option. Depending on the filter choice (Active Person only, his or her descendants, his or her ancestors, or entire database), the report may contain from one to many individual summaries. Another option for this report is the inclusion of source information when listing events.

Comprehensive Ancestors Report

This report produces a comprehensive description of ancestors of the Active Person. The highlights of this report include elaborate layout, images of children, present and former spouses, and source citations. Specific options: number of backward generations to consider, whether to cite sources, and whether to break pages between generations.

Descendant Report

This report produces a brief description of descendants of the Active Person. Specific options: number of forward generations to consider.

Detailed Ancestral Report

This report covers in detail the ancestors of the active person. It includes vital data (birth and death) as well as marriages. Specific options: number of backward generations to consider, as well as a variety of options regarding the exact contents to include.

Detailed Descendant Report

This report covers in detail the descendants of the active person. It includes vital (birth and death) information as well as marriages. Specific options: number of forward generations to consider.

FTM Style Ancestral Report

This report creates an ancestral report similar to that produced by the Family Tree Maker (tm) program. It covers in detail the Active Person and his/her ancestors It includes vital information as well as marriages, children, and notes. Specific options: number of backward generations to consider.

FTM Style Descendant Report

This report creates a descendant report similar to that produced by the Family Tree Maker (tm) program. It covers in detail the Active Person and his/her descendants. It includes vital information as well as marriages, children, and notes. Specific options: number of forward generations to consider.

Family Group Report

This creates a family group report, showing information on a set of parents and their children. Specific options: the spouse (available only if the Active Person has more than one spouse).

Individual Summary

This report produces a detailed summary on the active person. The report includes all the facts known to the database about that person.

Common options for text reports are the filename of the output, the format of the output, selected style, page size and orientation. For HTML reports, there is no page information. Instead, HTML options include the choice of the HTML template, either available in GRAMPS or a custom template defined by you. Optionally, the reports can be immediately opened with the default application.

[Tip]Tip

The options used in reports are persistent: each report remembers its options used last time.

View Reports

View reports are representing overall summaries of the database information available immediately for on-screen viewing. The following view reports are currently available in GRAMPS:

Number of ancestors

This report displays the number of ancestors of the active person.

Summary of the database

This report displays the overall statistics concerning number of individuals of each gender, various incomplete entries statistics, as well as family and media statistics.

Web Page

The only available report in this category is the Narrative Web Site report. It generates a web site (that is, a set of linked web pages), for a set of selected individuals.

Narrative Web Site

Introduction

GRAMPS 2.0.6 introduced the Narrative Web generator. The new tool provides considerably more functionality than the older web generator. Instead of using HTML templates to customize the pages, CSS style sheets are used.

More information is now displayed about each person, along with information about sources, places, and media objects. Introduction pages can be added to provide additional information, such as family history.

Selecting the output

Genealogy records can generate a lot of files. Many web servers have a difficult time with many files in a single directory. The Narrative Web Generator strives to keep the number of files per directory to a manageable level. To do this, a hierarchy of directories is created. The generated files names are not intuitive, but are unique per person. Subsequent runs will generate identical file names, making it easy to replace files.

By default, the output files are written to the specified directory. Because of the number of files and directories that are created, it may be difficult to transfer the files to an external web host. To aid in this, you may directly create a gzip'd tar file to more easily upload the data. This is the format that should be used if you would like to take advantage of the free genealogy page hosting at the GRAMPS web hosting site.

To select the gzip'd tar file, select the Store web pages in .tar.gz archive option.

Applying a filter

Like the previous web page generator, and most of the other GRAMPS reports, you can control what is included in the output by choosing a filter. Several default filters are provided for you, but you are free to use the Custom Filter Editor tool to create your own.

Any person matching this filter who is not excluded due to the privacy rules, will be included in the output. The default filter includes all people in the database.

Applying a style sheet

GRAMPS provides six built in style sheets for your web page. Each of these style sheets produces a unique look for your pages. The generated style sheet is named narrative.css. You may edit this file if you wish to further customize your site.

If you make modifications to your style sheet, you need to be aware the regenerating the pages with the same output directory will overwrite your changes to this file. To prevent this from happening, make sure you choose No style sheet for subsequent runs.

Character set encoding

Because of GRAMPS internationalization ability, the default character set for the HTML pages is UTF-8. This provides support for virtually all characters.

The Apache web server is sometimes misconfigured to override the character set specified in an HTML page. This causes problems with the UTF-8 character set generated by GRAMPS, distorting characters on the screen.

If your web server is misconfigured and you do not have privilege to fix the configuration, you may solve this problem by overriding the default character set to match what your web server may be expecting.

Copyright notice

International copyright law reserves all rights to your data. You own the data, and people must get your permission to use it. In genealogy, however, sharing data is a common ideal. It this case, you may wish to grant the user more rights.

While the default for GRAMPS is to place a notice indicating that all rights are reserved, we give you the option to place your site under one of several of the Create Commons licenses. With a Creative Commons license, you grant user's certain permission to use your data without requiring them to contact you directly for permission.

See the Creative Commons web site for more information.

Controlling page generation

Three additional pages can be generated by the web page generator. The Home page is a page that will display an image and a whatever text you wish. To enable this page, choose a Media Object from the Home Media/Note ID menu on the Page Generation tab. If the Media Object contains an image, the image is displayed at the top of the page. If the Media Object contains a Note, the Note's text is used for the text of the page. A second page, the Introduction page, works similarly. Just choose the Media Object in the Introduction Media/Note ID menu.

If you choose to include a contact page, the researcher information stored in the database is displayed, along with the information specified in the Publisher contact/Note ID menu. Please use this page with caution, since you may consider your contact information to be private.

Privacy

Privacy of personal information is an important issue on the web today. GRAMPS tries to give you control over the information that is presented.

GRAMPS provides two options to control the privacy of your information. If you select the Do not include records marked private option, any data that is marked as private will not be displayed on the generated site. If you select Restrict information on living people, GRAMPS will attempt to determine which people have the potential of still being alive, and will omit these people from the database. Some countries have laws that indicate that a certain number of years must pass after someone's death before information can be published. The Years to restrict from person's death option allows you to specify how many years a person must be deceased before the information is included.

Please note that it is your responsibility to double check all information in the pages for any privacy information. GRAMPS cannot be held responsible for any privacy issues.

Adding custom code your pages

If you are not interested in customizing your pages, you may skip the section.

The previous web generator allowed you to customize your pages using HTML templates. Your data would be substituted for certain markers in the code.

This method proved to be too cumbersome for most users. The Narrative Web Page Generator introduces a simpler mechanism. On the Page Generation tab, you may specify text (including HTML code) that will be inserted into each page, separately for the header and the footer.

To create this code, you need to create a Media Object marked as an internal note. To create this, add a new Media Object in the Media View, and select the internal note option. You may then enter your HTML code.

To insert the code from the internal notes into the web pages, select the appropriate Media Objects from the HTML user header and HTML user footer menus. Two div sections will be added to the pages - userheader and userfooter. The corresponding HTML code is inserted into the HTML page surrounded by div markers. You can customize your style sheet to provide additional formatting and positioning information to control these sections.