Gramps and Windows

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Revision as of 11:19, 28 June 2008 by Helge GRAMPS (talk | contribs) ('''Using external applications to open a media file (e.g. ".JPG" or ".PDF")''')
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Windows and GRAMPS

General

The following hints are based on experience using Windows XP and GRAMPS version 3.0.x. GRAMPS in version 3.0.x is running well on a Windows PC.

Attention: Before trying some thing make a backup of your data. All the following details are for information only. No body guaranties any think at all!

Installing GRAMPS

Also if it is unusually for a Windows user, that it is necessary to install several parts, to get a complete and working application - it's the way to install GRAMPS. If one follows the instructions of the documentation (Windows_installer) it should work without trouble.

Setting the working language for GRAMPS

GRAMPS looks during the start-up-phase for an environment variable (called LANG) to switch to a special language. It's better to use a ".CMD" or ".BAT" file to control this environment variable instead a permanent setting in the windows registry, to have the possibility to go back to the GRAMPS standard language (English) in the case you want to report about a problem or a bug.

One may use a ".CMD" file having this content:

  @rem it's to switch to GERMAN
  SET LANG=de_UTF-8
  gramps.py

Hints: You have to place the ".CMD" file into the same folder as the file "gramps.py" or to set your environment variable PATH to include the path to the file "gramps.py". At least in one case there was a problem using a line "phytonw.exe gramps.py" in a ".CMD" file: The usage of the environment and STDIN, SDTOUT and STDERROR does not work properly. May be, there is any where a Phyton-Windows specialist who knows more about this topic or is able to solve the problem.

Updating GRAMPS

Well, for Windows user it's the same unusual way to update GRAMPS as the way to install it. See the documentation for more information to get the newest Phyton files (Installation, see chapter 'Obtaining the source'). As usual in this community the update includes only the GRAMPS part of the software. But if one did run first all steps of the installation there should be no problems using the update.

Using external applications to open a media file (e.g. ".JPG" or ".PDF")

GRAMPS has some predefined MIME types for some file types (e.g. ".JPG", ".BMP" or ".PDF") and uses the MIME definitions of your Windows System, to select the external application accessing the media file. This is not the usual way of the Windows Explorer where only the file's extension defines the default application for the file (the method is usual called File Associations)! If GRAMPS knows the MIME type of a special file this MIME type will be shown in the column "Type" of the table "Media". But it may be, that this MIME type is an unknown or incomplete MIME type of your system. In this case one has to define the correct MIME type. It’s possible but really not easy. So, a better way would be, to find an application where the MIME definition for file type of your choice will be defined as a MIME type or to focus onto the build-in file types of GRAMPS.

There is a general limitation for GRAMPS using MIME definitions: GRAMPS is not able to handle MIME definitions where the command "OPEN" is defined by using the method DDE. Because e.g. PaintShopPro in version 6.0.0 is using DDE, it works not as image viewer for GRAMPS.

Comment (28.06.2008): Up today for file and folder names standard ASCII letters are allowed only (e.g. no 'Ü', 'Ä', .... on a German Windows)! The related bug action is still pending.

Archiving

The new possibilities for archiving versions of a GRAMPS database is announced for GRAMPS version 3.0.2. There are some special hints to use the functionality:

  1. Get RCS for Windows from the internet: [1]
  2. Build the correct Windows Environment:
    1. GRAMPS needs to find the executables of RCS. That's why one should add the path to these files to the environment variable PATH. It's better only to change temporary the PATH variable by using a ".CMD" or ".BAT" file. And it's also better to place the "RCS-path" at the beginning of the value of the variable PATH. This is because other programs could use executable files having equal names as RCS executables. Known is CVS for Windows which uses it's own version of rlog.exe.
    2. RCS needs an environment variable (called TZ) for your time zone, e.g.: "TZ=CET+1" for Central European Time less one hour (that’s for instance for MUNICH).

So the complete “.CMD” may look like this:

  @rem it's to switch to GERMAN
  SET LANG=de_UTF-8
  
  @rem RCS environment start
  @rem the time zone for RCS
  SET TZ=CET+1
  @rem set the path to RCS bin files for Windows
  SET PATH=C:\Programme\rcs\bin\win32;%PATH%
  @rem RCS environment end
  
  gramps.py

eof.