Difference between revisions of "Gramps 4.0 Wiki Manual - What's new?"

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m (Reports)
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== Views ==
 
== Views ==
  
* New columns on views (private)
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* New columns on views (private records)
  
 
=== Fan Charts ===
 
=== Fan Charts ===

Revision as of 13:31, 11 May 2013

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This section gives an overview of changes since Gramps version 3.4. These changes are also detailed later in this manual. Users of Gramps version 3.4 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 4.0 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 3.4
  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 4.0. Use your operating system's regular installation process to do this. It is also best to uninstall Gramps 3.4 before installing Gramps 4.0, or make sure you install Gramps 4.0 in a different location.

After you install Gramps 4.0, 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

The changes from Gramps 3.4 to Gramps 4.0 have been kept to a minimum as Gramps 4.0 is a technology upgrade release, not a user feature upgrade release. Family trees in 3.4 and 4.0 are the same, so (provided the same database software is used) a family tree can be opened in both versions without upgrade or downgrade needed.

Nevertheless, some changes are visible after the migration:

The Dashboard

The Gramplet view has been renamed Dashboard. This to avoid an overload of the word Gramplet, and to make it more clear to new users what can be expected in this view

New Look and Feel

Gramps now uses GTK 3 to create the interface, so you need to set a GTK theme with the GTK theme switcher that supports GTK 3. If Gramps looks ugly after installation, this is because you use an old GTK Theme. Try out some GTK 3 themes to see which one gives you a beautifull Gramps experience. See status GTK 3 for Gramps 4.0.

Data Model

There are no changes to the data model. An .gramps xml file generated by Gramps 3.4 is identical to the one of Gramps 4.0

Navigator modes

Category navigator mode
Drop-Down navigator mode
Expander navigator mode

If there is more than one navigator mode installed, you can choose the navigator mode with the drop down. The navigator modes are "Category", "Drop-Down" and "Expander".


New exporter, help and bug report dialogs

Export Assistant: Start screen
Export Assistant: Choose the output format screen

Exporter, Help and Bug report dialogs have been rewritten according to Gtk3 migration.


Colors dialog

Color Preferences

A new section on Preferences dialog, which let you set the colors used for boxes in the graphical views.


Plugins changes

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


NarrativeWeb

A huge restructuring happened for narrative website (these changes might also happen in a point update on 3.4). It should overall be much more stable

To Do Gramplets

To Do Gramplet

Objects and the Dashboard now have a To Do gramplet, listing all the notes which have been indicated as with Note Type To Do. New To Do notes can be created directly from the gramplet. See ToDo Gramplet for more details.


Views

  • New columns on views (private records)

Fan Charts

Fan Chart
Fan Chart

In the Charts category (Previously called the Ancestry category), you will see two new core Charts: Fan Chart and Descendant Fan. These are two Charts that give you a good overview of a family tree. The Fan charts shows the principal parents of every individual. The Descendant Fan shows you all children, all their families, and then so on to see the entire descendant tree.

The Fan Charts are powerfull, use the Configure button in the toolbar to investigate some posibilities:

  • colored filtering via filter sidebar
  • Gradient coloring to give extra information
  • Print to output (pdf, printer) from the toolbar


Tools

Nothing

Reports

More languages switcher into reports (Records, Kinship), enhancements and consistency on this feature, in relation with new locales handling.

Under the hood changes

Technical stuff

Python 3 support

Gramps supports Python 2.7+ and Python 3.2+ starting from 4.0. We advise to use python 3.2 if possible. To support both versions, some code now runs slower on python 2.x.

Code reogranization

Gramps now has completed the code reorganization, making the code structure of Gramps much more cleaner.

Python based install

Gramps has deprecated the use of autotools for installation, and now uses a python based installation. As a user you are advised to a package installer to install Gramps. Those installing from source code can do some now with the commands :

python setup.py build
python setup.py install

See the INSTALL and README file for details. This means that once you installed gramps, you can use the code as a standard python module, eg:

from gramps.gen.lib.date import Date

to use the date computations as used by Gramps.

Locales handling

See Internationalization.

Command Line Interface

/

Further information

More information.

Roadmap

Changelog


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