Gramps 3.0 Wiki Manual - Settings

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Preferences

Most of the settings in GRAMPS, are configured in the Preferences dialog. To invoke it, choose Edit ->Preferences... .


Fig. 4.1. Preferences dialog

The tabs on the top display the available option categories.

General

This category contains preferences relevant to the general operation of the program. Options are:

  • Automatically load last database: Check this box to automatically load the last open database on startup.
  • Add default source on import: This option affects the importing of data. If this is set, each item that is imported will contain a source reference to the imported file.
Gramps-notes.png
Note

Adding a default source can significantly slow down the importing your data.

  • Enable spelling checker: This option controls the enabling and disabling of the spelling checker for notes. The gtkspell package must be loaded for this to have an effect.
  • Display Tip of the Day: This option controls the enabling and disabling of the Tip of the Day dialog at startup.
  • Use shading in Relationship View: This option controls the enabling and disabling of shading in the Relationship View. If enabled, information will be grouped together in regions with a shaded background.
  • Enable database transactions: This option controls the enabling and disabling of transactions during database operations.
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warning

Care must be taken with selecting this option. By default, transactions are enabled. This improves database performance and protects database integrity. However, if your system is using a version of the Python language prior to version 2.5, your database will not be portable to other machines, and if you want to transfer your data to another machine, you will need to export using the GRAMPS XML format. Disabling this option will allow databases to be portable, but at a risk of database integrity problems.

Display

This category contains preferences relevant to the display of data. Options are:

  • Date format: This option controls the display of dates. Several different formats are available, which may be dependent on your locale.
  • Surname Guessing: This option affects the initial family name of a child when he/she is added to the database.
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Tip

This option only affects the initial family name guessed by GRAMPS when the Edit Person dialog is launched. You can modify that name the way you see fit. Set this option to the value that you will most frequently use, as it will save you a lot of typing.

If None is selected, no guessing will be attempted. Selecting Father's surname will use the family name of the father. Selecting Combination of mother's and father's surname will use the father's name followed by the mother's name. Finally, Icelandic style will use the father's given name followed by the "sson" suffix (e.g. the son of Edwin will be guessed as Edwinsson).

  • Status bar: This option controls the information displayed in the status bar. This can be either the Active Person's name and GRAMPS ID or Active Person's relationship to the Home person.
  • Show text in sidebar buttons: This option controls whether or not a text description is displayed next to the icon in the sidebar. This option takes effect after the program has been restarted.

Name Display

This category contains preferences relevant to the display of names. In GRAMPS there are two type of name display formats: the predefined formats, and the user defined custom formats. The predefined formats are:

  • Family name, Given name Patronymic
  • Given name Family name
  • Patronymic, Given name
  • Given name

When predefined formats are not suitable one can define it's own format.

  • Display format: The system wide name format is selected here from a list, which contains both the predefined and custom name formats (if any).
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Note

Besides the system wide setting GRAMPS allows deciding the name display format individually for every single name via the Name Editor dialog (see adv-an ).

  • Custom format details: It expands the custom format handling user interface.
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Note

Custom name display formats are stored in the databases, thus before loading any database the Custom format details expander is disabled.

  • Add: Opens the Name Format Editor window to define a new custom format.
  • Remove: Deletes the selected custom Name Display format.
  • Edit: Opens the Name Format Editor window to modify the selected custom Name Display format.

Name Format Editor

New formats are created, and existing formats are modified using this editor.

  • Format name: The name of the custom format. The format name can be any string, it is used only to recognize the format later on the Display format list.
  • Format definition: The actual format is defined here using special formatting characters. Before and after these special characters any other character or string is allowed. For example: "(%t) %L, %f" will give "(Dr.) SMITH, Edwin". The formatting characters are:
align="center"
Character Name CHARACTER NAME
%f Given Name %F GIVEN NAME
%l Surname %L SURNAME
%t Title %T TITLE
%p Prefix %P- PREFIX
%s- Suffix %S SUFFIX
%c Call name %C CALL NAME
%y Patronymic %Y PATRONYMIC
  • Example: Shows a dynamic example how the name will be displayed with the current Format definition string.
  • Format definition details: Shows a quick reminder of the special formatting characters.

ID Formats

This category contains preferences relevant to the automatic generation of GRAMPS IDs.

Tango-Dialog-information.png
ID Prefixes

The ID prefixes use formatting conventions common for C, Python, and other programming languages. For example, the %04d expands to an integer, prepended with zeros to have the total width of four digits. If you would like IDs to be 1, 2, 3, etc, simply set the formatting parameter to %d.


  • Person: Provides the template for generating IDs for a Person.
  • Family: Provides the template for generating IDs for a Family.
  • Place: Provides the template for generating IDs for a Place.
  • Source: Provides the template for generating IDs for a Source.
  • Media Object: Provides the template for generating IDs for a Media Object.
  • Event: Provides the template for generating IDs for an Event.
  • Repository: Provides the template for generating IDs for a Repository.

Warnings

This category controls the display of warning dialogs, allowing the re-enabling of dialogs that have been disabled.

Researcher Information

Enter your personal information in the corresponding text entry fields. Although GRAMPS requests information about you, this information is used only so that GRAMPS can create valid GEDCOM output files. A valid GEDCOM file requires information about the file's creator. If you choose, you may leave the information empty, however none of your exported GEDCOM files will be valid.

Marker Colors

This category controls the highlight color of items in the Person list when a marker has been set for a person.

Other settings

Besides Preferences dialog, there are other settings available in GRAMPS. For various reasons they have been made more readily accessible, as listed below.

  • Column Editor: The columns of the list views may be added, removed, or reordered in a Column Editor dialog, see column-editor-fig . Only checked columns will be shown in the view. To change their order, drag any column to its desired place inside the editor. Clicking OK will reflect the changes in the appropriate view. To invoke Column Editor dialog, choose Edit ->Column Editor... .
Tango-Dialog-information.png
Column Editor

The Column Editor is available and works in the same way for all list views. Specifically, it is available for People View, Family View (children list). Sources View, Places View, and Media View.

  • Setting Home person: The Home person is the person who becomes active when database opened, when Home button is clicked or the Home menu item is selected from either Go menu or the right-click context menu anywhere.

To set Home person, make the desired person active and then choose Edit ->Set Home person... .

  • Adjusting viewing controls: Whether the toolbar, the sidebar, or the filter (People View only) are displayed in the main window is adjusted through the View menu.

Advanced manipulation of settings

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Warning

The contents of this section is outside the scope of interest of a general user of GRAMPS. If you proceed with tweaking the options on the low level you may damage your GRAMPS installation. Be careful. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

By default, GRAMPS stores its settings using gconf2 system. All the settings used in this version of GRAMPS are stored in subdirectories under /apps/gramps/ in the gconf2 namespace. Accessing the keys can be done either using

gconftool-2

command line tool, or the

gconf-editor

GUI tool.

All keys are documented, and the notification mechanisms are used as appropriate. Therefore, updating keys from outside of GRAMPS should lead to updating GRAMPS in real time, without necessarily restarting it.

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