Customize the Genealogical Symbols lookup table
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This article's content is incomplete or a placeholder stub. |
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temporary Workaround This article is not intended for casual use. The Genealogical Symbols feature was a recent addition in the Gramps 5.1 version. Some function are not yet configurable through the interface. |
Genealogical Symbols
Allows you to use Genealogical Symbols instead of text abbreviations in reports, charts and the Gramps interface.
This tab gives you the possibility to use one font which is able to show all genealogical symbols. (Once configured see: Prerequisite to use Genealogical Symbols)
If you select the ☑use symbols checkbox, Gramps will use the selected font if it exists.
If the fontconfig prerequisite has been installed, then on the Edit ➡ Preferences ➡ Genealogical Symbols select the Try to find button, Gramps will attempt to detect any suitable unicode text fonts that include gylphs for all the required symbols.
After clicking the Try to find button in the Edit ➡ Preferences ➡ Genealogical Symbols tab
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Fonts must include all gylphs to be recognized. The full set of Genealogical Symbols required by this feature are not defined in every font family. Many of the death glyphs are religious representations and were omitted as a form of conflict avoidance. For a test Windows 10 computer with 191 font families installed, only one Unicode font (Segoe UI Symbol) was found that included all the required glyphs. |
When the search has completed select one of the fonts from the Choose font pop-up menu list and then select the ☑use symbols checkbox.
- List of Genealogical Symbols shown (listed in order shown in the What you will see: preview at the bottom of the tab):
| meaning | symbol | Unicode code point(s) | name |
|---|---|---|---|
| female | ♀ | U+2640 | Female Sign |
| male | ♂ | U+2642 | Male Sign |
| gender unknown | ⚪︎ | U+26AA | Medium White Circle |
| Lesbianism | ⚢ | U+26A2 | Doubled female sign |
| Male homosexuality | ⚣ | U+26A3 | Doubled male sign |
| Heterosexuality | ⚤ | U+26A4 | Interlocked female and male sign |
| hermaphrodite | ⚥ | U+26A4 | Interlocked Male and Female Sign |
| transgender | ⚦ | U+26A6 | Male with stroke sign |
| neuter | ⚲ | U+26B2 | Neuter |
| born illegitimately | ⊛ | U+229B | Circled Asterisk Operator |
| birth | * | U+002A | Asterisk |
| baptism, christening | ~ | U+007E | Tilde |
| engaged | ⚬ | U+26AC | Small White Circle |
| married | ⚭ | U+26AD | Marriage Symbol |
| divorced | ⚮ | U+26AE | Divorce Symbol |
| unmarried | ⚯ | U+26AF | Unmarried Partnership Symbol |
| burial | ⚰︎ | U+26B0 | Coffin |
| cremation | ⚱︎ | U+26B1 | Funeral Urn |
| killed in action | ⚔︎ | U+2694 | Crossed Swords |
| this line extinct | ‡ | U+2021 | Double Dagger |
| death | ✝︎ | U+271D | Latin Cross |
| Not included in Preview | |||
| stillborn | ✝︎* | U+0086 U+002A | Latin Cross, Asterisk |
| born illegitimately | *⃝ | U+002A U+20DD | Circled Asterisk |
| approximate(ly) | ± | U+00B1 | Plus-Minus |
| before | < | U+003C | Less-Than Symbol |
| after | > | U+003E | Greater-Than Symbol |
Prior to the Genealogical Symbols feature being implemented, birth and death data were explicitly labeled in English for the Active Person. This data was labeled with a simple abbreviation of label where more compact display was needed for the other relatives.
The Relationship category view to the right shows the superseded English label method.
It was determined that these English labels did not encourage localization. An arbitrary set of symbols had been proposed that was deemed more universal than English terms and abbreviations.
This set of symbols has been hard-coded, following a [Tamura Jones expounds on 30-year old recommendation for genealogical software. However, these recommendations were based on the very limited options in early personal computers. The symbols used for birth & death are re-purposed from mathematical operators. This raises objections about ambiguity.
Other than choosing between text & pictographs, the Preferences options are limited. Choosing a font only subtly affects symbol renderings. But you can also select from a variety of death symbols.
On the other hand, genealogical charts and books have been being printed for centuries. It is possible to hack the hard-coding to use other standards.
Genealogy symbols preferences
Advanced Manipulation of Settings - you can manually editing the gramps.ini configuration ini file stored in the Gramps version sub-folder of the user directory.
However, this section store a negligible amount of information. Rather being Advanced manipulation, hacking this configuration file offers little value. The most common hack will be to delete the subsection entirely and allow Gramps to re-create it with default settings.
The files in the user directory do not need SuperUser privileges to modify. However, restrictions related to multi-user permissions will apply.
Initially, the preferences section related to Genealogical symbols are in a section labeled [utf8] (which stands for 8-bit Unicode Transformation Format) and it is created with commented out lines:
[utf8] ;;available-fonts=[] ;;death-symbol=13 ;;in-use=0 ;;selected-font=
| Name | symbol identifier |
Displays | Gramps code |
|---|---|---|---|
| DEATH_SYMBOL_NONE | 0 | ||
| DEATH_SYMBOL_X | x | 1 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_SKULL | ☠ | 2 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_ANKH | ☥ | 3 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_ORTHODOX_CROSS | ☦ | 4 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_CHI_RHO | ☧ | 5 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_LORRAINE_CROSS | ☨ | 6 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_JERUSALEM_CROSS | ☩ | 7 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_STAR_CRESCENT | ☪ | 8 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_WEST_SYRIAC_CROSS | ♰ | 9 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_EAST_SYRIAC_CROSS | ♱ | 10 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_HEAVY_GREEK_CROSS | ✚ | 11 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_LATIN_CROSS | ✝ | 12 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_SHADOWED_LATIN_CROSS | ✞ | 13 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_MALTESE_CROSS | ✠ | 14 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_STAR_OF_DAVID | ✡ | 15 | |
| DEATH_SYMBOL_DEAD | Dead | 16 |
The selection of the Death symbol seems to default to '12' or 'Latin Cross'. So, we'll keep in mind that the hacking row 12 on the preset table of alternate Death symbols is the most likely target. After selecting a font and enabling the Genealogical Symbols sets the configuration section to:
[utf8] available-fonts=['Segoe UI Symbol'] death-symbol=12 in-use=1 selected-font='Segoe UI Symbol'
Built-in date label options
The Relationship category view to the right shows the symbolic (language agnostic) labeling method created for the 5.1 version of Gramps.
The Relationship category view to the right also shows the language agnostic labeling method created for the 5.1 version of Gramps. (The Gramplet bars have been turned off to reduce distracting clutter.) The data for Sibling 2 has been changed to display the baptismal and burial date text styling variants. These are only shown in this view when an explicit date for birth (or death) is missing. These dates are italicized to indicate that they are inferred by other events, not the actual birth or death dates.
Hacking the date labels
Where are the Symbol definitions are stored in Gramps
The definitions for Genealogical Symbols for Gramps labels are located in the Gramps application directory. The relative file subpath is: gramps\gen\utils\symbols.py
The exact Gramps application directory path varies by OS:
- Linux
- Windows
- MacOS
Application files & sub-directories often have hidden, write-restricted and/or write-protected file permissions. To hack the Genealogical Symbol set, you may need to un-hide the folder and open the file for editing using Administrator (Superuser) privileges.
If the file is modified beyond usability, a backup copy of the file is archived on GitHub at :
https://github.com/gramps-project/gramps/blob/maintenance/gramps51/gramps/gen/utils/symbols.py
The pertinent (unmodified) sections of the symbols.py file are:
all_symbols = [
# Name UNICODE SUBSTITUTION
(_("Female"), '\u2640', ""),
(_("Male"), '\u2642', ""),
(_("Asexuality, sexless, genderless"), '\u26aa', ""),
(_("Lesbianism"), '\u26a2', "oo"),
(_("Male homosexuality"), '\u26a3', "oo"),
(_("Heterosexuality"), '\u26a4', "oo"),
(_("Transgender, hermaphrodite (in entomology)"), '\u26a5', ""),
(_("Transgender"), '\u26a6', ""),
(_("Neuter"), '\u26b2', ""),
(_("Illegitimate"), '\u229b', ""),
(_("Birth"), '\u002a', "*"),
(_("Baptism/Christening"), '\u007e', "~"),
(_("Engaged"), '\u26ac', "o"),
(_("Marriage"), '\u26ad', "oo"),
(_("Divorce"), '\u26ae', "o|o"),
(_("Unmarried partnership"), '\u26af', "o-o"),
(_("Buried"), '\u26b0', "d"),
(_("Cremated/Funeral urn"), '\u26b1', "d"),
(_("Killed in action"), '\u2694', "d"),
(_("Extinct"), '\u2021', ""),
]
# genealogical death symbols DEATH_SYMBOL_NONE = 0 DEATH_SYMBOL_X = 1 DEATH_SYMBOL_SKULL = 2 DEATH_SYMBOL_ANKH = 3 DEATH_SYMBOL_ORTHODOX_CROSS = 4 DEATH_SYMBOL_CHI_RHO = 5 DEATH_SYMBOL_LORRAINE_CROSS = 6 DEATH_SYMBOL_JERUSALEM_CROSS = 7 DEATH_SYMBOL_STAR_CRESCENT = 8 DEATH_SYMBOL_WEST_SYRIAC_CROSS = 9 DEATH_SYMBOL_EAST_SYRIAC_CROSS = 10 DEATH_SYMBOL_HEAVY_GREEK_CROSS = 11 DEATH_SYMBOL_LATIN_CROSS = 12 DEATH_SYMBOL_SHADOWED_LATIN_CROSS = 13 DEATH_SYMBOL_MALTESE_CROSS = 14 DEATH_SYMBOL_STAR_OF_DAVID = 15 DEATH_SYMBOL_DEAD = 16
# The following is used in the global preferences in the display tab.
# Name
# UNICODE SUBSTITUTION
death_symbols = [(_("Nothing"), "", ""),
("x", "\u03a9", "x"),
(_("Skull and crossbones"), "\u2620", "+"),
(_("Ankh"), "\u2625", "+"),
(_("Orthodox cross"), "\u2626", "+"),
(_("Chi rho"), "\u2627", "+"),
(_("Cross of Lorraine"), "\u2628", "+"),
(_("Cross of Jerusalem"), "\u2629", "+"),
(_("Star and crescent"), "\u262a", "+"),
(_("West Syriac cross"), "\u2670", "+"),
(_("East Syriac cross"), "\u2671", "+"),
(_("Heavy Greek cross"), "\u271a", "+"),
(_("Latin cross"), "\u271d", "+"),
(_("Shadowed White Latin cross"), "\u271e", "+"),
(_("Maltese cross"), "\u2720", "+"),
(_("Star of David"), "\u2721", "+"),
(_("Dead"), _("Dead"), _("Dead"))
]
Simulating previous Symbol definitions
| Data | text label | abbreviated |
|---|---|---|
| birth | Birth | b. |
| baptism | bap. | |
| christening | chr. | |
| death | Death | d. |
| burial | Burial | bur. |
| married | Marriage | mar. |
| divorced | Divorce | div. |
all_symbols = [
# Name UNICODE SUBSTITUTION
(_("Birth"), '\u03b1', "b."),
(_("Baptism/Christening"), '\u224b', "bap."),
(_("Marriage"), '\u26ad', "mar."),
(_("Divorce"), '\u26ae', "div."),
(_("Buried"), '\u26b0', "bur."),
# The following is used in the global preferences in the display tab.
# Name
# UNICODE SUBSTITUTION
death_symbols = [(_("Nothing"), "", ""),
("x", "\u03a9", "d."),
(_("Latin cross"), "\u271d", "d."),
Alternative Symbol definitions
| Data | abbreviated |
|---|---|
| birth | α |
| baptism | ≋ |
| christening | ≋ |
| death | Ω |
| burial | ⚰ |
| married | ⚭ |
| divorced | ⚮ |
all_symbols = [
# Name UNICODE SUBSTITUTION
(_("Birth"), '\u03b1', "b."),
(_("Baptism/Christening"), '\u224b', "≋"),
(_("Marriage"), '\u26ad', "mar."),
(_("Divorce"), '\u26ae', "div."),
(_("Buried"), '\u26b0', "bur."),
# The following is used in the global preferences in the display tab.
# Name
# UNICODE SUBSTITUTION
death_symbols = [(_("Nothing"), "", ""),
("x", "\u03a9", "d."),
(_("Latin cross"), "\u271d", "d."),
Contents
See also
- Genealogical Symbols - Gramps feature user documentation
- GEPS 039: Genealogical symbols in gramps
- Feature request: 9098 Gramps should be able to use genealogy symbols everywhere.
- Customize the Genealogical Symbols lookup table located in the Gramps application directory inside: gramps\gen\utils\symbols.py
- Gramps application directory for:
- Linux
- Windows
- MacOS
- Tamura Jones expounds on Genealogical Symbols (the 'Unicode' section is particularly relevant)
- based on the Gramps Discourse threads: