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Sam888

Joined 11 February 2011
Revision as of 03:52, 29 June 2021 by Sam888 (talk | contribs) (Addon downloads and popularity)
Gramps-notes.png
Current Webmaster for the Gramps Project

Hi, I generally aim to help the developers who can program; I do alot of non-development work for the Gramps project including: testing and bug triage, website maintenance, writing and updating documentation on the wiki for new releases, building the third party addons as needed.

Volunteer Website Administrator

Manage and monitor the website (not Github)

Wordpress(Blog)

  • Convert existing Gramps theme to use a more modern mobile aware template that comes with WordPress.

MantisBT(Bug tracker)

  • Upgraded failed due to database needing to first be manually converted to UTF-8 collation (which means I'll finally need to manually convert from latin1_swedish_ci collation the bugtracker has been using since original installation around 2006!)

Mediawiki(Wiki)

Extensions

Language Related
Requested Extensions

Discourse Trial

Investigate replacing the mailing list on Sourceforge and trial using Discourse at https://gramps.discourse.group/

Migration from sourceforge mailing list

Things to do

Addons

Bug Triage

Unofficial bug triager.

Cleanup Started: 201409 Completed 20150523 with life in between...

Gramps Bugtracker: https://gramps-project.org/bugs/


CI Test

Improving CI

Coverage

Gramps User Manual

The Gramps User manual is a mix of the following:

  • Reference manual
  • User guide
  • Tutorials (how to?)
  • 8888 / 9042 / 10919 [Review]Gramps Help button User Manual wiki-links (In progress)

Update for Gramps 5.1

Gramps 5.1 User manual translations

Ensure that any new functionality is covered by user documentation.

Update (almost) all images
  • Started: 2019-0x-xx
  • Completed:

Remaining 10 image links:


Update and improve text to match the interface
  • Started: 2019-0x-xx
  • Completed:

also manually test all user accessible parts of Gramps (done as part of above two)

Notes on User manual update

Notes on various regressions, paper-cuts and annoyances noticed during the user manual update.

When I have time, issues and feature request will be created for the following if required.

#################### As at 20200729 #################
************Bugs**************************************
[](Bug# )graphical reports - calendar - information overflows boxes (pdf) (ms-windows tested only)
[](Bug# )when you try to run "Extract Event Description" the "Undo history warning" dialog disappears behind The "Tool Selection" dialog (ms-windows only checked)
[](Bug# )Merge (people) dialog does not grow larger when you expand the "Detailed Selection" section out.

%%%%%%%% Help related bugs
[](Bug# )Encloses & Enclosed by gramplets - Fix user wiki - rename sections for help links to goto:

https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Gramplets#Place_Enclosed_By

https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Gramplets#Place_Encloses

************Papercuts - Enhancements******************
%%%%%%%% All for Help finding improvement see issue 10919 %%%%%%%%%%%%%
[] context menu's (right click) add an entry for "Help" at the bottom of each? 
[] Add help url to context menu entry for "About: XXXXX" (as was done on addon views)
    [] Dashboard Category (grampletview)  ( gramps/gui/widgets/grampletpane.py : def _button_press( )
        [] Also show context menu ###>>> when no database is loaded! <<<###
           See https://gramps-project.org/bugs/view.php?id=10594
    [] Chart Category views
            [] 2 way fan chart
            [] fan chart (ancestors)
            [] descendant fan chart
    [] Each of the "list" & "grouped list" views
            [] Relationships Category view
                    [] Nick Halls new "Combined View" for Relationships Category
            [] Families Category view
            [] Events View
            [] Citations List View
            [] Repository List View
            [] Media List View
            [] Notes List View
            [] People Category
                [] Tree View - Grouped People
                [] Tree View - People List View
            [] Places Category
                [] Places List View
                [] Places Tree View
            [] Sources Category
                [] Citation Tree View
                [] Sources List View
    [] Geography views
        [] All known places
        [] All known places for one Family
        [] Have they been able to meet ?
        [] All places related to Events
        [] All known places for one Person
            [] All known places for one person with graphical information (KML files)
        [] Every residence or move for a person and any descendants
        [] Have these two families been able to meet ?
    [] category drop down under navigator? (or change it to a context menu that you click in an empty section of the navigator section?)
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%...........................................................
[](Feature# )for the "filter" gramplets name each one (shown on Title bar when detached) and provide working help link (then update screenshots and link to wiki)
[](feature# )"Add Rule dialog": if you select a filter then select a top level category of filter" the right hand window shows random stuff from previous filters (suggest displaying a blank area only)

[] (Bug#) dashboard - order of default Gramplets is different on ms-windows  versus linux? eg: top [surnames|welcome] on win 10 - how do you guarantee order ( have a look at geography view icons on toolbar each time the views order is different, which does not help with keybindings!)

[] On each "autobackup/report/export assistant wizard/make backup xml/import/export view as..." options the "File Name:" location should default to the OS's home/documents & media directory  "~" [Linux/Mac OS/MS-Windows (C:\Users\<~username>\Documents) Media> (C:\Users\<username>\Pictures ) ]  eg:  Gtk.FileChooser.set_current_folder()
see recent issue where user overwrote report_settings.xml with a report on Macosx!

[] add a menu option under "Help" to "Open folder locations"? to aid with helping people for "user directory" etc "Media directory"  (see recent difficulty with finding user directory 
https://gramps-project.org/bugs/view.php?id=10370

[] text reports - Place Report  - use the active selected place by default and then allow people to change (keep it consistent with how other reports are.)

[] Graph report - Family Lines - consider having "People of Interest" tab first so it's obvious that something has to be selected / or bring this report in line with others so that the Active person is already selected at a minimum. ( https://gramps-project.org/bugs/view.php?id=11598 Person had issue with graph report )

[] For each report determine what the optimal page settings are and use them as defaults

[] for each report be able to have separate settings per report for the page settings!

[] text reports- Database Summary Report - is not very useful as it does not name the "Family Tree" the summary is for or a date for reference.  and it's missing an actual summary of other information eg citation/repository's it can provide more information

[] text reports - "Records Report" is not very useful as it does not name the "Family Tree"  or the date produced

[] for clarity suggest adding the word "List" to the list views (this will make it easier to support people) (see my suggestion previous unmerged PR)

[] Make toolbar icons insensitive (grey them out) when not needed or available to use eg: empty list  

[] If the list view is empty, add a greyed out single (non select-able) entry that instructs the user to add to the list?

[] Tool Selection dialog - needs help button 
https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Tools#Tool_Selection_dialog

[] Report Selection dialog - needs help button 
https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Reports#Report_Selection_dialog

[] when running a second instance of gramps if you attempt to open a family tree that's open in the first instance the break lock dialog should have an additional button option to open as read only.

[] "Books reports"  dialog change the name of the second section from "Current book" to Current book items" (aids in legibility of user manual!)

[] "Family Trees" Manager button (displays "Connect to a recent database" when you hover over it) Change it to "Connect to a recent  Family Tree"

[] "Family Trees" Manager - Archive (RCS) the "Revision comment" dialog should be renamed to "Archive version comment" and the label "Version description" should be the same?

[] No Menu option to add/delete/restore a Gramplet is available.

[] Gramps CLI info "gramps -v" needs a section that list third-party addons with version numbers and if prerequisites have been met.

[] keybinding on Categories only goes 0 to 9(citations) and we now have 13 categories :( So repositories/media/notes have no shortcut (maybe ctl+shift+<number> ?  ctl plus / minus?   [SM- ok: ctl + n = next category / ctl + p = previous category]

[] age on date gramplett - awkward wording on the resulting "quick view"

[] "Family Tree Manager" for the status column the status icons need tooltips or just use words

[] Sort Events tool has no feedback on completion!

[] narweb spelling of the tab "Html options" should be "HTML Options" to keep it consistent.

[] report options tabs issues with repeating names (due to tab reorganization!) think of better single word names!

[](feature# )For the "Web Reports" have the report test first that the file path to write to exist instead of attempting to generate the website and then after awhile failing!  eg: manually type in a non existent file path and run the report.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@User manual@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
[] Using a wiki for the user manual has already been shown that it does not make translating the manual any easier! (find a simpler way so as to not waste a translators time) as well as the overhead of maintaining the mediawiki!

[] Note that page 20 ( Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Reports_-_part_1 ) will be merged to ( Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Reports ) later as Gramps code needs to update for all subsequent pages!!)

[] geography view rename:
	* "The map" tab to "Map Common"
	* rename each of the tabs for the views so they either have the name of the view in full on the tab or the name appears as a text line.

[] @prculley Originally when I created that the "Add>New" menu I had intended for each option to initially switch to that particular list view and then present the editor and once the new item was created for it to be the active highlighted item in the list view, so that users could link the action they have taken with the result instead of having to search for it afterward? Do you know if this is or something similar is possible?

prcully>>(Almost) Anything is possible ;-)...   I'm pretty sure that would take some code to do both switch views (do whatever clicking on item on left side does) and then invoke Editor.  And then finally change active to new whatever.   Probably only four lines of code for each editor.

..........................
Mentioned by others:
* It would also be great if the tag colors showed in the Person editor as well.and all the other editors where tags are shown, including the "Tag selection" list. https://www.reddit.com/r/gramps/comments/hy2xqh/option_to_show_tag_with_colors_in_relationships/

.................................................................................................
[] for addon prerequistes have a look at converting them to use "depends_on = "  like in the following addons
https://github.com/gramps-project/addons-source/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=depends_on&type=
https://github.com/gramps-project/gramps/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=depends_on&type=

which can be a comma separated list for multiple dependencies/prerequisites (so that addons that share prerequisites import the same library?) (maybe move spell check into an addon etc? tip of the day... possibilities...)

depends_on = ["libwebconnect"]

mentioned in the following
https://sourceforge.net/p/gramps/mailman/message/27070037/
''In your gpr file, you can have a line like:

depends_on = ["libwebconnect"]

which is a list of id's from other gpr files. This example will ensure
that libwebconnect is loaded before your plugin. If it can't be found,
or you have a cycle, then your plugin won't be loaded.

If it is a common function, perhaps libhtml is the right place to put
it, and you can put a depends_on on that.

-Doug''


example output is on terminal only:

Cannot resolve the following plugin dependencies:
   Plugin 'UK Web Connect Pack' requires: ['libwebconnect']

[](feature)  For plugins/addons if prerequisites not available display a page stating why/what is missing that includes the addon description and a url to the support page.

..............Unsorted................................
[] Only documented behavior should be supported. Ensure that clear documentation is a requirement for contributions enhancing Gramps (Part of the PR)

[] '''Configuration Files''' Add advanced appendix that mentions the assorted files eg: Custom filters (custom_filter.xml) and report setting (?.xml) and how they are not being backed up for migration and backup?  also ( recent-files-gramps.xml )  
see:
	* https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Reports_-_part_1
	Report Settings
	The settings chosen when generating a report is stored in the users profile, in .gramps/report_options.xml, and will be used as default settings when generating the next report. If there is a need to revert to the default options for any reason, this file can simply be deleted. 

############## Website admin ####################################
[] A2 Hosting Server resources seem ok: Appdata images! 
https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Category:AppData
(Consider another location eg github! )
(Was: Godaddy Server resources issue that caused code:500 server errors )

############## Addons #################
[] Add on Graphical Report - Descendants Lines -Error writing to Output Stream  (turn off document options and make sure report defaults to the documents directory (reported a few times on the mailing list)  / also report defaults to png but is able to output svg according to the wiki help page.

[] PedigreeChart help url addon goes to
https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Reports#Pedigree_Chart
instead of:
https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=PedigreeChart

[] PedigreeChart addon printing for PDF is poor eg look at the cut off title.

.............................................................
[] htree - cherry-pick changes to addon-source master

[] rebase "Timeline pedigreeview" on pedigreeview or visa versa?
.............................................................
[] FIX Timeline pedigreeview  & htree when I select "About" from context menu.

(gramps.exe:6340): Gtk-WARNING **: Can't set a parent on widget which has a parent
.........................................................
[ ] Pluginmanager (prculley)  also unlike the built in check for addons this one does not mention you need to restart gramps if you install a "gramps view" although it says it should on the addon wiki support page
..........................................................................
[] we don’t actually use SF for much any more and they’ve been having a lot of issues in the last couple of years maybe we should migrate the lists to Google Groups (jralls)

* SM another options is https://groups.io/  
* 2020 We are trialing https://gramps.discourse.group/
..........................................................................
https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Edit_Image_Exif_Metadata
* See: Future of Exiv2? (  https://github.com/Exiv2/exiv2/issues/1018 )
..........................................................................
https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Addons_Status
..........................................................................
https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Gramps_5.1_Wiki_Manual_-_Entering_and_editing_data:_detailed_-_part_3#Attributes

Gramps has two dialogs called "Attribute Editor dialog" that look different but both collect the same info in the top section.

eg: from Source's attribute tab creating a new attribute.
........................................................
[ ] Some addons when building have the following warning:

Listed:          Graph View
GraphView/graphview.py:2383: warning: 'msgid' format string with unnamed arguments cannot be properly localized:
                                      The translator cannot reorder the arguments.
                                      Please consider using a format string with named arguments,
                                      and a mapping instead of a tuple for the arguments.

For solution see:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23405521/why-i-get-msgid-format-string-unnamed-arguments-warning-only-when-running-m

Which essentially say "To solve the problem, simply use named arguments"

my_string = "Hello %(person)s, it is %(time)s o'clock." % ({
    'person':'Foo', 
    'time':'two'
})

translated_string = "It is %(time)s o'clock, Mr. %(person)s" % ({
    'person':'Foo', 
    'time':'two'
})
...................................................................

Reports

Create new advanced settings appendix

Gramps Developer Documents

In the sphinx format:

On wiki:

See also:

User Experience Test Plan


Check/Mention

Gramps Downloads (since: 2001/04/21)

Downloads Result Table

For the various Gramps program installers.

# Download Location Gramps Version Date Checked Download Count Comment
1 Github ([1]) 5.1.3 2021-05-13 551,889 Official
2 Sourceforge [2] 5.1.3 2001-04-01 to 2021-05-01 1,037,020 Official - Old site
3 Portableapps.com Sourceforge ([3]) 5.1.3 2005-10-01 to 2021-05-01 780,648 Unofficial
4 Debian 5.1.3 2004-01 to 2020-01 1,082 Debian Popularity contest statistics for Gramps (This only report Statistics for those that Opt-in to the reporting of the statistics. Usually reports the deliberate installation date for Gramps.
5 chocolatey.org 5.1.3 20XX-0x-0x 3450 Repacked MS-Windows installer?
6 Majorgeeks 5.1.3 20XX-0x-0x 9,790 Direct from them Downloads
7 bytesin.com 5.1.3 20XX-0x-0x 3,044 Publisher: Aaron R. Short&Ormus?
8 download82.com 5.0.0 20XX-0x-0x 1,169 Direct downloads
9 chip.de 5.1.3 20XX-0x-0x 9,336 Direct downloads
10 computerbild.de 5.0.1 2015-04-14 - 20XX-0x-0x 8,656 Direct downloads
11 softonic.findmysoft.com 5.0.1 20XX-0x-0x 6,119 Direct downloads
12 softpedia.com 5.1.3 2021-06-15 6,358 Gramps AIO
13 softpedia.com 5.1.3 2021-06-15 5,587 Gramps AIO Portable
14 cnet.com - (Gramps-Project) 5.0.0 2021-06-16 62 Gramps for Linux
15 cnet.com - (Gramps-Project) 5.0.0 2021-06-16 176 Gramps for Unbuntu
16 cnet.com - (Gramps-Project) 5.0.0 2021-06-16 31 Gramps for Fedora
17 cnet.com - (Gramps-Project) 5.0.0 2021-06-16 675 Gramps AIO (64bit)
18 cnet.com - (Gramps-Project) 5.0.0 2021-06-16 3,197 Gramps AIO (32bit)
19 cnet.com - (Gramps-Project) 5.0.0 2021-06-16 131 Gramps for macOS
20 cnet.com - (PortableApps) 5.1.3 2021-06-16 1,748 Gramps Portable
Total - - 2021-05-13 2,429,358 <- Manual count

The Gramps Project has broken the multi-million download milestone( Total: 2,429,358 (as at 2021-05-13) ).

Information was gathered from the sources shown that list download statistics from Links to website you can download Gramps from

The shown total downloads is not an indication of the active userbase.

  • [ ]Write up a blog post or wiki page or just leave here.
  • [ ]create an issue to hold the csv files.
  • [ ]create a Graph to plot downloads overtime.
  • [ ]Contact sites that host older versions of the Gramps files for downloads and ask them to update to the current version at least.

Here is my attempt at gathering the statistics required to answer how many download to date.

The "User Base" - is the number of people who use a particular product or service, especially one available on the Internet


It is very difficult to estimate userbase as you get many different types of users

  • One time users who download and install Gramps and find it is not for them.
  • Long term users.
  • Alot of the downloads will be for users upgrading existing installations


Download Statistics commence from when the Gramps project started 2001/04/21.

A further break down of downloads is possible by (but I won't be doing that):

  • Supplied by project (Source code for manual installation)
  • Linux/OpenBSD etc
    • Supplied by volunteers to the project for download
    • Supplied by directly from the distribution website
  • Microsoft Windows
    • Supplied by volunteers to the project for download
    • Legacy version from portableapps.com
  • Apple MacOS
    • Supplied by volunteers to the project for download

Addon downloads and popularity

As a number of people have commented and or raised the issue directly with me via email here is a summary of what I know:

Question
Does the Gramps project know which addons are the most popular and are download statistics available?
Answer
Addon downloads are not tracked and there are no plans to track them due to privacy and technical issues (see below). Even if addon downloads where tracked it would only represent a small percentage of users who check for addons!
Question
Why?
Answer
Github counts downloads via its releases section page only for normal downloads of files. But not for the way Gramps addon downloads are done as they are binary files that only sit in a second git repository itself in a directory per grampsXX release called download and not on the addon releases page, this is no different to the way the gramps addons were downloaded from the previous sourceforge website.

Note that we do have an the "Headline News gramplet " addon that does poll the Gramps website and was originally causing an issue making the website slow and at sometimes of day stopping it altogether as it was polling too often (once an hour from everyone who happened to be running Gramps at that moment! This was an unintended way to get DOS'ed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack ) when I took over as website admin I investigated and tracked down and changed the polling period to once a every 24 hours (for current and previous versions of Gramps!), alot of people had installed it on the Dashboard !

addon repositories

We use two addons repositories the first is for the source code where addon developers can have access

https://github.com/gramps-project/addons-source

the second is for the generated/built addons downloads and is restricted to a small group of people to attempt to avoid any security or malicious code issues, this repository is what the Gramps program is pointed at and checks for updates:

https://github.com/gramps-project/addons

Information