[Gramps-users] My thoughts on usability/data entry

[Michael W. <mik...@gm...>]

I have used GRAMPS exclusively for two years now, ever since I switched to
Linux.  I appreciate the robustness of GRAMPS, but I am often highly
frustrated by the difficulty of data entry, especially on the Relationship
and Pedigree views.  Coming from Family Tree Maker 2006, the ease of data
entry is the one thing I miss.  I have some relatively minor suggestions and
some more major ones that I would like to air.

There is way too much empty space in the Relationship View as it is, and the
space could be much better used.  I don't think I should have to scroll down
every time a family has more than four children (not to mention when there
are many siblings in the family with parents).  A small yet very beneficial
change would be to present birth and death dates for Father, Mother,
Siblings, Spouse, and Children to the side of their names rather than below
their names.  This would almost halve the vertical space used.  And why not
move the family with parents to a separate column on the right of the
screen, for more efficient use of the space?

The main issue I have with the pedigree view is that it takes too many
clicks (two; one too many) to go to a child of the active person.  Couldn't
there be an always-present left sidebar display of the active person's
parent and spouse families?  Furthermore, sometimes with distant ancestors
with several children I have descendants recorded for, I don't remember
which one is my ancestor.  This would be helped by a sidebar because the
sidebar could display children's dates and maybe spouses.

A couple more points:
*It is very annoying when, while viewing the individual list, the progress
of an alphabetic search falls behind as I am typing, and thus the cursor
jumps back a character and messes up the search query.  If this could be
fixed that would be great.
*As a larger point, I think there can be greater ease of entry without
relinquishing the benefits of a database model, i.e. place records, event
records, etc.  One thing that I would absolutely love would be the ability
to create new individuals as children in the relationship view without
opening up a create individual dialog, by having text entry fields for basic
information such as given name, surname, birth date, birth place, death
date, and death place.  The user could then click the edit button to edit
that person's other details only if they needed.  I think with the place
fields, you could have dropdown lists like, for example, the family name
field in edit individual dialog has now.  But instead of simply populating
the place text entry field with the place name chosen from the dropdown
menu, you could have the shaded entry type that indicates the name is
locked, so you'd have to edit the place record or choose a new place if you
wanted to change the name.  If the user, while using this quick individual
creation, entered a place name which didn't already exist, the user could be
prompted to create a place record with that name.

I think it would make everyone's data entry so much more efficient and less
time consuming, quite possibly even by an order of magnitude for some tasks
such as repeatedly entering children to families, if this was done.

Current method:
1. Click edit family
2. Click add child
3. Enter given name, edit family name if necessary (with three shift-tabs or
a click)
4. Click add event for birth
5. Click date field, enter date
6. Click select place or new place, or 4 or 5 tabs to get to it; select
place; click ok (or alt-o); click ok (or alt-o);
7. Repeat 4-6 for death event
8. Click OK
Total: 14 clicks, or 7 clicks and 15 to 17 keystrokes, plus the data you are
entering (including selection of place)

Better method:
1. Click in the Given name text entry field that would be on the
relationship view; enter given name
2. Tab to the next box, which is surname, and is guessed as normal, but
selected so you just have to type if you want to change it
3. Tab to birth date box, enter date
4. Tab to birth place box, begin entering place as in the current popup box;
select place
5. Repeat 3-4 for death event
6. Tab out of death place - and automatically to the next sibling's given
name
Total: 1 click, 6 keystrokes, plus the data you are entering (including
selection of place)

A less drastic reform would be to have an add child button on the
relationship view so the edit family window wouldn't have to be entered,
saving one click.  Of course there could always remain the old layout mode
for those who wanted it.

As an aside, I believe the default action for double-clicking a child in the
edit family dialog should be to edit the child individual, not to edit the
relationship.  It is annoying to have to right-click to get to this common
use, while I almost never have to change a relationship from the default.
Or perhaps there should be an edit individual button next to each child in
the child list of an edit family window?  It might not be an issue if having
to click accept changes every time I modify a family prevented me from just
going back to the relationship view and clicking the child's edit button.

Two last things.  I recall finding that there was once a find and replace
button.  Why was it removed?  Secondly, batch find and replace among place
records would be nice (or is that in the Places Tool plugin and I need to
install that?)

I don't mean to be overly demanding of the developers, and if I had more
experience with building large applications I would try to contribute, but I
hope these suggestions/criticisms are constructive, and that GRAMPS
developers have a meaningful consideration of whether the usability can be
improved.

--Michael White