Gramps 3.4 Wiki Manual - What's new?

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This section gives an overview of changes since Gramps version 3.3. These changes are also detailed later in this manual. Users of Gramps version 3.3 are encouraged to review this section to be sure to take advantage of these new features.

Before you upgrade

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Warning

Creating an archive alone to safeguard your data might not be appropriate before upgrading. In the unlikely event that Gramps 3.4 corrupts your database, it could also corrupt the archive. An export as outlined in this section is recommended.

Before you upgrade, make sure your family tree data is secure. The best way to do this is:

  1. Start Gramps 3.3
  2. Open your family tree
  3. Export the family tree to the gramps xml format or the gramps xml package format (which includes your photographs and other media files associated with your family tree data). Export your tree via menu Family Trees->Backup....
  4. Close this family tree and repeat the above steps for any other family trees you have
  5. Keep the resulting file(s) in a safe place

For more information, please review Backing up a Family Tree.


After properly safeguarding your data, proceed to install Gramps 3.4. Use your operating system's regular installation process to do this. It is also best to uninstall Gramps 3.3 before installing Gramps 3.4, or make sure you install Gramps 3.4 in a different location.

After you install Gramps 3.4, you can open your existing family trees and continue working. In case of problems (e.g., after a complete system upgrade), use the backup file(s) created above to recreate your family tree(s).

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Warning

Once you open a family tree in a newer version of Gramps or using a newer operating system, you generally should not try to open that database using an older version again. As always, the gramps xml format is the format to use for the interchange of your data in such cases. There are tools to repair broken databases, but they are for expert users, so avoid needing them by following the steps above before you upgrade your OS or Gramps.

Visible changes to the core

Changes visible after the migration: interface, data.

Citations (formerly Source References)

The principal changes are that:

  • Citations can be shared; and,
  • Citations can have media object attached to them.

It is possible to use Gramps version 3.4 in the same way as Gramps version 3.3, if you do not want or need to take advantage of the new features:

  • The Sources view looks almost the same as the old Sources view (but with the addition of a disclosure triangle for sources that have citations),
  • The buttons for adding sources to information like events are the same as before,
  • The selector for choosing an existing source looks the same (although with the addition of disclosure triangles to allow a citation to be chosen),
  • The new 'Citation' editor looks (and behaves) almost exactly the same as the old 'Source Reference Editor',

Only if a user particularly wants to share citations between objects do they need to be aware of the change. The change is also intended to be entirely compatible with GEDCOM.

See GEPS_023:_Storing_data_from_large_sources for an explanation of the rationale behind the new features.

If you have an existing Gramps database which you are upgrading to Gramps 3.4, after the upgrade process, Gramps will suggest that you might like to merge citations that are the same and refer to the same source. Unless you have specifically recorded different information (for example different notes) on old Source References that are the same, you should probably use the Tools->Family Tree Processing->Merge Citations... tool.

When you start using Gramps, if you want to share a citation, then you would click on the Add an existing citation or source and in the Select Source or Citation dialogue, you would select the appropriate source and then citation. Clicking OK would take you to the Citation editor, but you will probably just click OK, because the citation and source are both shared.

Editors

  • The citation editor has changed very little from the former Source Reference Editor:
Figure 1.1

As shown, the main change is that the Citation can have a Gallery of images, Data fields, and also has (back-)references because it is a separate primary object.

  • Improvements on image selection feature.
  • New 'Default family relationship' option value (Preferences)
  • Add some accelerator keys on toogle buttons without labels. See also #Accessibility.

GEDCOM import

GEDCOM import error/warnings report. bug tracker: 5599 - provide a report of GEDCOM errors and warnings after import to show the user what information has not been imported.

Fig 1.2 Import report

The report (shown above) details most of the lines that were either ignored or could not be understood. The contents of the line (or lines where there are continuation lines) are also shown. In some cases, the lines may not be exactly what is contained in the input GEDCOM file, because the line is reconstructed following some processing.

In addition to this report, some improvements have been made to GEDCOM import to process more of the input file. Some data has been imported into Gramps data elements even when they are not exactly the same as the GEDCOM data elements. Because the format of GEDCOM, and the format that Gramps uses are different, there are inevitably some pieces of data that cannot be imported.


More details of the mapping from GEDCOM to Gramps are now provided. See GEDCOM import.

Plugins changes

Everything about the plugins: import/export, gramplets, views, reports, tools.

Import/Export

  • Citations support on file formats
  • Improvements on Gedcom file format support

Reports

  • output file formats

Improvements : RTF, ODF, LaTeX, cairo (PDF, Print...)

  • support image sections on textual reports
  • Citation support and source review (NarrativeWeb report, etc ...)
  • Paper options

Consistency rules on paper values, orientation and file format (options set by user)

Book

  • Improvements
  • Alphabetical Index and Table Of Contents (TOC) features on book report

Detailed reports

  • Improvements, bug fix, consistency on age calculation, etc ...

NarrativeWeb

  • Media gallery, thumbnails
  • hyperlink menu for screen readers and braille writers

Views

The sources view has been enhanced with a new tree view (Fig 1.3) that also shows citations below the source, in addition to the existing flat view (Fig 1.4)

Fig. 1.3 Sources (Citation Tree) view
Fig. 1.4 Sources view


There is also a new Citations view (Fig 1.5).

Fig. 1.5 Citation view



  • Size adjustments on Main, Navigation, Bottom and Side bars

Tools

  • A new tool for merging our citation records: MergeCitations.
  • Review on some Repair Family Tree tools

Under the hood changes

Technical stuff (gui/gen).

Accessibility

  • Better ATK support

Addons manager

  • Review, improvements

Command Line Interface

  • Arguments/flags

Improvements, consistency, optional translation

Gramps XML file format and database

  • Citations support
  • Gramps XML is now idempotent[1].
  • Exporter does not change records order any more, making it easier to look at differences between versions/revisions.

User classes

Reports and tools have user classes. These classes provide a means to interact with the user in an abstract way. These classes should be overridden by each respective user interface to provide the appropriate interaction (eg. dialogs for GTK, promts for CLI).

Further info

More informations.

Roadmap

Changelog


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