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Addon:Historical Context

Revision as of 04:58, 26 September 2025 by ErickLedger (talk | contribs) (remove extra "the")
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This is a Third-party Addon. The Addon/Plugin system is controlled by the Plugin Manager.

Please use carefully on data that is backed up, and help make it better by reporting any issues to the bug tracker.
Unless otherwise stated on this page, you can download this addon by following these instructions.
Please note that some Addons have prerequisites that need to be installed before they can be used.

Example of the detached/undocked "Historical Context Gramplet" default output showing untinted rows for Historical Context during the life time of Blanco, Daniel (1752-1805) from the Example.gramps family tree.

The Historical Context gramplet based on the basic concept is that the events in world history during a Person's lifetime provide context to the other events of their life. So the default lists of world events might include pandemics, wars and other socio-political pressures. You can edit the lists or add your own. So you might make a list of genealogical record stores that are valuable to be checked for specific eras.

Some additional documentation is currently in the GitHub (online code development management system) repository of addon developer Kaj Mikkelsen. Review the README.md in the HistContext repository.

Contents

Usage

Available to be added on the Dashboard, People and Relationship category views, this Gramplet displays historical events that occurred within the lifespan of the active person.

It references Historical Context event lists which have the start year, end year, the Event descriptions and a URL about that Event.

The default list output shows untinted rows for Historical Context during the life time of the active person.

A double-click on a row will open your preferred browser at the provided Link.

Configuration options

 
Configuration options dialog

The View -> Configure... offers a variety of filtering options for the lists of Events.

  • Rows starting with this in the text column will be hidden: Filter out string - excludes Events where the "Text" column starts with a particular exact string
If the string is set to "Cen", then all lines where the text starts with "Cen" will be filtered out. (i.e., "Census" as well as "Century")
  • Use filter: - Use filter (deselected by default),enables the filter if selected.
  • Show outside life span:
    Show outside life span (selected by default), show only those in the life span of the Active Person.
  • Foreground color items in lifespan: - (black, default) text color
  • Background color items in lifespan: - (white, default) shading
  • Foreground color items outside lifespan: - (black, default) text color
  • Background color items outside lifespan: - (light grey, default) shading
  • Select from files - Shows the available Event Lists

Select the Save button to apply the changes.

File locations

The Event Lists can be saved in the following location:

  • file path: gramps\gramps60\plugins\HistContext

Event Lists

The Historical Context event lists are CSV lists of dated Historical Events (with the semicolon as the delimiter) that are loaded and compared against the lifespan (birth year through death year) of the Active Person. These seven files come with the addon and can be changed with any editor that saves in plain text:

CSV format

You can create a custom Event file (named custom_v1_0.txt) and those Events will be merged into the list. After creating the custom Event file, adding it as a Media object means the file will be included in backups with media. And if the default viewer for .txt files is a text editor instead of a simple view, then you can use Gramps to add or remove Events from its historical event list.

The format is one Event per line, each line. Short lines or those with too few (less than 3) delimiters will be skipped:

start date;end date;description;URL hotlink

For Events that only last one year, enter the same year for both start and end date. For ongoing Events, use Today for the end year. If either of the dates are missing, the gramplet assumes a life span of the Preferences limit for "Maximum age probably alive".

When entering a URL from services like Wikipedia, remove the subdomain language (i.e., en. for English) or platform (e.g., m. for mobile indicator subdomain). This allows Wikipedia to adapt to the target machine.

configuration options

The customizations for this Gramplet are stored in 3 locations: a common HistContext.ini the gramplet's folder, distributed splitbar .ini files for each view mode (e.g., People_personlistview_sidebar.ini in the gramps/gramps60 folder) and the gramps.ini file in the Gramps User Directory.

The undocked size options are saved independently in the .ini files for the splitbars in each view mode. The gramps.ini file merely has the window position for the undocked dashboard gramplet. 

[HistContext]
name=HistContext
height=20
expand=True
detached_width=602
detached_height=496
state=maximized
help_url=Addon:Historical_Context
navtypes=['Person', 'Dashboard']
page=3

Configuration options are saved in the HistContext.ini found in the addon's subdirectory in the gramps/gramps60/HistContext.ini file. Once the View -> Configuration is uses and saved, there will be HistContext.ini in the addon folder with the options: 

[myopt]
;;bg_sel_col='#ffffff'
;;bg_usel_col='#ededed'
;;fg_sel_col='#000000'
;;fg_usel_col='#000000'
;;files='custom_v1_0.txt'
;;filter_text='String in beginning of text'
;;hide_outside_span=1
;;use_filter=0


Alternative Color Picker

Click on any color swatch in the Colors tab of the Edit -> Preferences to show the palette Pick a Color selector dialog. Then click the + button in the Custom colors at the bottom to show the color picker. Copy the value to the Historical Context options. Cancel the gradient Pick a Color dialogs.

See also:


See Also

Retrieved from "https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Addon:Historical_Context&oldid=124849"