DescendantsLines

Lines of descendants chart

DescendantsLines is an in-development plugin for Gramps which generates a graphical descendants tree using orthogonal edges and routing ("square edges").

History

2007: Adam Sampson has written a standalone python script for parsing data.gramps (GRAMPS XML). [1]

2010: this script needs some updates for avoiding minor issues.

A modified script is available on the addons repository. [2]

Limitations

1. Script ignores role on event (was added in 2007).
2. Script ignores localized date handlers (use ISO date format, date quality in english)
3. Memory limiation with a large database (DOM parsing)

Descendants Lines

There is an experimental try for migrating this Gtk/cairo code to a draw plugin working into Gramps (font, style, path, canvas, output formats).

Draft version is available on Addons repository as unstable (beta). [3]

The idea will be to keep the Gramps XML parsing, but with a copy of the active database and use of current report environment (output formats, style, path).

Needs

Pass 1: generate a tmp XML with only data needed for the report, to load it as input

1. Enable Person selection (Gramps ID) - done
2. Generate a temp Gramps XML database matching 'IsDescendantFamilyOf' filter rule - done
3. Input path - done
4. Clean-up - done

• simple Gramps XML template with events, persons, families objects (only export primary event role reference).
• key/filter issues remain, currently export all persons to XML file.
• 'localized' dates (does not follow last DTD, which uses english and ISO format)
• a basic persons list print for draw report: this avoids empty returns when generating the report and could help to check what is missing (see above).
• output path and format are hardcoded: $HOME/DescendantsLines.png

FINISHED - it works fine!

Pass 2: use draw report environment

1. Generate a plugins/docgen/PNGDrawDoc.py file [4]
2. Move Gtk code to draw report (if possible)
3. Move cairo code to draw report (if possible)
4. Output path
5. Clean-up, pylint, etc ...

Alternate Pass 2: use of user-defined (mega)-widgets

1. Have a look at mega-widget request and implementation [5]
2. Output path through mega-widget

Feel free to contribute or improve it.