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→The reviews and feedback: further general comments
* Another comment:
<blockquote>When I add a person in PAF, or Ancestry, I see one screen where I enter name, gender, and main events. When I do the same in Gramps, I see half a dozen screens, one for the person, one extra to add each event, and another extra to add a location or to choose an existing one. That's a lot of work, and when I want to enter birth, baptism, death, and burial, I need at least 9 screens in Gramps, where PAF still has only one. And in Gramps, it's actually more, because many times I need an extra click to see whether the location that I want to enter already exists in the database. In those occasions, it is not half a dozen, but a full one,really!<br>- '''From: Enno Borgsteede - 2014-03-31 - [http://sourceforge.net/p/gramps/mailman/message/32167521/ Re: (Gramps-devel) Gramps 3.4.8 from GIT --> Sources]'''</blockquote>
* Another comment:
<blockquote>Over the years, I've tried to get friends and relatives to use Gramps. They've all tried but eventually gave up and complained to me that it's too difficult and confusing to use. I'm not saying that what you have can't do the job and, yes, I find it very useful – for extended analysis. Bur for day-to-day work, it's the pits and I always fall back to Family Tree Maker
and so do my genealogist colleagues. I've worked in genealogy for over 40 years and IT program development for almost as long and have been so disappointed that you don't use the GUI environment to your or the user's advantage. It really feels like a DOS or Windows 2 environment. Times change – techies should be the first to recognize that. So, come on! – get with it!!!!! Keep the old stuff, it's useful, but look at your competitors and other open source stuff and be better than them… or at least keep up.<br>- '''From: f8pumy@... sent to webmaster email and forwarded to Gramps-devel mailing list - 2018-10-07 - [https://sourceforge.net/p/gramps/mailman/message/36438271/ (Gramps-devel)Fwd: Gramps 5.0]'''</blockquote>
* Another comment:
<blockquote>I wish this was a love letter but it isn't. I have used a 1990s Family Tree Maker for years... made by Broderund.
I have not wanted to get into a subscription program like ancestry and
the new Builder because I run a large genealogy site with about a
hundred kin. It was my intention to find a free software program that
was hassle free and would be easy for ordinary, non hobbyists. Ones who
don't wanna know about field names and operators to navigate through
their ancestry.
Sadly Gramps isn't it. I found my 1991 version of FTM has better
navigation that yours and even better than the New touted Family Tree
Builder. So I offer you a few suggestions for your next rewrite. Work
on your labels and your search mechanism first... thats stuff the
ordinary user looks for. Ease of Navigation.
First, so you know where I'm coming from, I've been a database and
website designer since about 92 with a lot of training in
dbase/Foxpro/VFP, and then when microsoft took over the world, I've done
some sqlserver, and a bit of XML because the Java programers liked that
old stuff. So I"ve worked with an open source, java group of people and
my background is different. I'm a journalist by trade so I write a lot
of documentation. Started out with dBASE on old Osbornes in the mid
80s. I was always more USER oriented than PROGRAMMER oriented, which
makes me gently suggest good programming is to impress USERS, not other
programmers. It's been hard for early programmers to learn writing for
users with WYSIWYG tools. User interface isn't a natural skill for
programmers who love writing very tight, interchangeable, object
oriented back end oriented apps. Less code the better. That's not the
secret to a good programming. Its Intuitive navigation for USERS. ANd
that's all.
I think your navigation is far too complex for regular people who want
the buttons intuitive, well labeled and laid out like Microsoft writes
most of their software. Easy on the eyes, key data displayed in BOLD
and using colors... that similarity of arrangement improves peoples
comfort level. I finally quit programming as designed by Dbase II for
DOS, and started doing things Microsoft's way. That's why Gates is a
kazillionaire and I'm not ;)
Family Trees label should be "OPEN" and the program should default to
the last tree that was used. How many genealogists work multiple trees
and go back and forth everytime they run the program? The old computer
word is LOAD, the one for the last twenty years is "FILE and OPEN".
Next should be Search or FIND. And it should open a dedicated box to
enter last, first, an an easy on the eyes Picker with the most important
fields first. And the ever present search box should be smaller,
fitting the fields of last,first,middle, Birthdate like Americans
expect it MMM-DD-YYYY not YYYY-MM-DD. I think ya can write code to
sort inside your date field, can't you? It's like you've made it easy
for the Programmer but unfamiliar for the USERS. Especially when
keying in data by phone when everyone on earth says month- day -year,
not the other way around. Just add code snippet. or put a date
preference in your setups to please Europeans.
I think programming large multi-functional boxes was easy to write but
it takes too many keystrokes to pick the function a user wants each time
they open the program. We dont' say "FILTER" anymore with all those
field buckets. Very old school. We say "FIND" or "SEARCH" and we make
the most common useage default. That'd be NAME, last first. I can't
imagine people even caring about ID and why it's so prominent. It
should be invisible to users, who search on name, then date of birth.
ID is just clutter. That whole filter screen should be hidden in a
Toolbox because regular people just don't search based on birthdates or
deathdates, marriage dates, very often. Its all about NAME.
Why do you break down by GENDER either, and spell it out rather than a
non-intrusive 1 character field for M or F? I wouldn't even waste six
spaces with a field label in the browser. I'm just saying you
display too many filter categories...its too hard to find people, and at
a glance see the right fields. Ya know how iTUNES lists, and gives
users ability to change field displays and field order on their browse
screen? You have ID and gender right after Name, and if anything, it
should be NAME, birth date, death date, place of birth--the key
information users would need to see from the people picker.
Speaking of the picker, why don't you just sort on LAST FIRST and not
bother with all the filter choices, You have a button for 'regular
expressions"? That so reminds me of Foxpro days when programmers tried
to make software users use our lingo. Who uses command lines but old
guard programmers? Bill Gates replaced all that but us old programmer
guys just can't let it go, can we?
In the lower part of your screen, why do you list by TYPE (personal -1
etc). If the event is the most common, BIRTH, just say birth. No
need for Personal-1, personal -, F amily -0. Under Events and names, a
bucket displaying any TYPE is just screen clutter and they should be
hidden. Events should be naturally displayed after birth by event
date. No need to sort by behind the scenes 'type'.
I wish when I had a PERSON selected, I could just always be just a click
away from PARENTS, and CHILDREN. And have the program intuitive enough
so if I clicked a parent or a child, the pointer would just go to that
person and repaint all the detail. In short, your navigation is clunky.
Okay, I've beaten on you enough. Now about your HELP. Wiki help was
trendy in the mid 90s but not anymore. The first thing I wanted to do
was find out what buttons to push to import my GED file...and it took a
lot of hunting and way too much explanation about your database layout
for me to find it. The whole thing is too wordy and not TASK
oriented. WHen you write a help screen, youre only answering one
question. "HOW DO I....." Yours seems more to be a long treatise on
how the back end of the program is designed.
How do I add a new spouse?
How do I move or not move children to that spouse?
How can I click on a child record and see that persons vitals, spouse,
children?
Do we really need all the field filters and regular expressions?
How can I quickly add a Note without pushing a bunch of buttons?
That's all...I just wanted to vent. Imagine how hard it would be
sitting with grandma at the kitchen table and entering data as fast as
she can tell it, moving from one kid to the next? Its all about John
married sally on this date...key in her first, middle, maiden, her date
of birth, now let's list the kids. And quickly bring up the kid's
record so we can add that kid's spouse before moving on to the NEXT
kid. or move upwards from people to their parents, then
grandparents...or click click click father records all the way back to
the progenitor?<br>- '''From: RadiomanKC - 2015-12-31 - [https://sourceforge.net/p/gramps/mailman/message/34731862/ (Gramps-devel)Fwd: feedback on Gramps]
;Feedback on MantisDB
