Re: [Gramps-users] Book report

[doug <do...@o2...>]

On 24/09/12 03:00, Paul Franklin wrote:
> First, let me advise you to upgrade to 3.4.1 as some bugs in
> 3.4.0 have been fixed.
>
> Second, let me say that I use the book report reasonably
> often so it is by no means unusable, outdated, etc.
>
> It is somewhat unclear to me what you have tried, but I
> believe what is needed is to change the font size in the
> sub-report's "style" -- as opposed to the "style" of the
> book report proper.  That is, "configure" the "item" in your
> book report which is the (graphic) ancestor chart report, if
> you want to change that particular font.  That will not
> affect the (text) ancestor report's font, which you will
> then need to "configure" if you want to change it too.
>
> I don't remember if I did that, tried doing that, back when,
> and if I did I don't remember if it worked or not.  Sorry.
>
> If it did work, which is what I am hoping (for you), I am
> pretty sure that you would not be able to "save" that "book"
> (with its configured sub-reports, since I don't think a
> sub-report's "style" is saved).  You would just be able to
> use it, to generate such a report.  You'd have to make such
> "style" configurations each time, not be able to save them.
>
> My memory is a little fuzzy about the exact details but it
> seems to me that was the motivation behind an improvement I
> made to the book report -- "feature request 5701" (which you
> can read about on the bug tracker if you wish).
>
> Unfortunately for you, it was only made to the development
> version of gramps (called "trunk") which will be released
> (eventually) as gramps 4.0 -- it will never be in any gramps
> 3.4 version.  (Although I suppose a senior gramps developer
> could decide that it should be applied to gramps 3.4 also.)
>
> But if you have some programming experience and are
> comfortable with making "patches" to existing programs
> (Python ones in this case), you could try an earlier version
> of that "5701 patch" -- the "draft8" version -- which as I
> (vaguely) recall I was patching gramps 3.4 with.  You would
> then have to apply the patch (which changes two programs in
> gramps, one being the book report) to your own gramps 3.4.
>
> I don't know what would happen when a gramps 3.4.2 comes
> along, which I assume you would want to start using.  You
> would then have to cope, compare the two programs perhaps,
> or reapply the patch (perhaps with some editing if there
> have been changes to the source in the meantime), etc.
>
> You would be on you own, unfortunately.  So only you can
> decide whether you feel capable of doing that, and how much
> this is a problem for you, etc.
>
> However, let me warn you that even with that patch the book
> report will not be perfect.  It will work fine (I believe)
> if you only have one instance of each type of a report
> inside the book -- one (text) ancestor report and one
> (graphic) ancestor chart in your case, for example.  It will
> similarly work fine (I believe) if you have more than one of
> a type of report -- say three (graphic) ancestor charts --
> as long as you have each one of them have the same set of
> options which affect things like the font.  Due to a bug
> (somewhere unknown to me) if you try something like a
> two-generation ancestor chart and a four-generation ancestor
> chart inside a book report, one of those sub-reports will
> look wrong.  Perhaps this will be fixed in gramps 4.0,
> perhaps not; I don't know.
>
> So I hope this has helped you, clarified things at least.
>
> Thank you for using gramps.
>


Thanks for your reply. I didn't go into the book report very 
deeply, but if I remember correctly I first tried setting 
the style in the sub-report and only when it failed tried 
applying the new style to the whole book.
However, from what you say it seems my idea of assembling a 
variety of reports has more chance of succeeding if I create 
them individually and then try to put them together as, say, 
an OpenOffice document.

Thanks for your help.

Doug