From: Don A. <dal...@us...> - 2002-06-14 04:50:05
|
Currently, GRAMPS uses the GEDCOM model for sources. This means that there is a base source that contains general information. Each time a source is attached to an item, a source reference is created. The source reference links to the base source, and provides specific information, such as page number, text, etc. For example, a source might be "The Smith Family" book. A source reference attached to a person's birth, would indicate the source as being "The Smith Family" book, and add information such as "page 27" and a quote from the book. Is the the correct model for GRAMPS to use? Don -- Don Allingham dal...@us... http://gramps.sourceforge.net |
From: Robert J. C. <cl...@ex...> - 2002-06-14 05:03:42
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On 13 Jun 2002 22:48:35 -0600 "Don Allingham" <dal...@us...> wrote: > Currently, GRAMPS uses the GEDCOM model for sources. This means that > [ ... ] > > Is the the correct model for GRAMPS to use? I sense that you are contemplating a change ;-) If you are looking for suggestions for alternatives I am afraid that I can't help you. If you are looking for opinions, well, those I have. So far I have not run into a situation or a source for which the GEDCOM model has not worked well. I am very happy with it. Call that one vote for the status quo. - Rob P.S. Good sigmonster! -- Harrison's Postulate: For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism. ( 12:55am up 29 days, 5:08, 0 users, load average: 0.28, 0.11, 0.09 ) |
From: Don A. <dal...@us...> - 2002-06-14 12:54:29
|
Well, not necessarily contemplating a change. I've had a few comments that the current model is too confusing. This leads to one of two problems: 1) The model is not correct or difficult to use. 2) The interface is confusing. Don On Thu, 2002-06-13 at 23:03, Robert J. Clark wrote: > On 13 Jun 2002 22:48:35 -0600 > "Don Allingham" <dal...@us...> wrote: > > > Currently, GRAMPS uses the GEDCOM model for sources. This means that > > [ ... ] > > > > Is the the correct model for GRAMPS to use? > > I sense that you are contemplating a change ;-) If you are looking for > suggestions for alternatives I am afraid that I can't help you. If you are > looking for opinions, well, those I have. > > So far I have not run into a situation or a source for which the GEDCOM > model has not worked well. I am very happy with it. Call that one vote for > the status quo. > > - Rob > > P.S. Good sigmonster! > > -- > Harrison's Postulate: > For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism. > ( 12:55am up 29 days, 5:08, 0 users, load average: 0.28, 0.11, 0.09 ) > > _______________________________________________________________ > > Don't miss the 2002 Sprint PCS Application Developer's Conference > August 25-28 in Las Vegas - http://devcon.sprintpcs.com/adp/index.cfm?source=osdntextlink > > _______________________________________________ > Gramps-devel mailing list > Gra...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gramps-devel -- Don Allingham dal...@us... http://gramps.sourceforge.net |
From: James A. T. <tr...@de...> - 2002-06-14 14:48:06
|
On Fri, Jun 14, 2002 at 06:52:57AM -0600, Don Allingham wrote: > Well, not necessarily contemplating a change. I've had a few comments > that the current model is too confusing. This leads to one of two > problems: > > 1) The model is not correct or difficult to use. > 2) The interface is confusing. My opinion is that there is simply insufficient documentation. It took a while before it dawned on me that a base + specific reference model was being used. In the meantime, some references were entered multiple times. In fact, insufficient documentation is probably the biggest problem in general. Sure, it's not that difficult to figure out how to get going in gramps, but a tutorial showing how to implement good genealogical practices in gramps would be very welcome. Specific areas that newbies would really find useful: - entering dates (using BEFORE, ABOUT, etc) - how to enter sources properly - how to enter places properly - recommended ways to enter names (birth vs. married surnames, nicknames, etc) - how do you give a level of confidence to a piece of information (I'm not sure how to do this myself) Why don't I start such a beast? Frankly, because I am a lone genealogist (no connection to any local genealogy groups I could ask for suggestions) who is just getting started and don't know enough yet. If someone starts a tutorial, I would definitely help. Having a genealogy program simply gives people another tool to hang themselves with. We need to create an environment that encourages people to become good genealogists. -- James (Jay) Treacy tr...@de... |
From: <dpe...@ne...> - 2002-06-14 16:22:07
|
On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, James A. Treacy had this to say: >On Fri, Jun 14, 2002 at 06:52:57AM -0600, Don Allingham wrote: >> Well, not necessarily contemplating a change. I've had a few comments >> that the current model is too confusing. This leads to one of two >> problems: >> >> 1) The model is not correct or difficult to use. >> 2) The interface is confusing. > >My opinion is that there is simply insufficient documentation. It took >a while before it dawned on me that a base + specific reference model This happened to me as well. I think it would definitely be good to add more information about sourcing to the documentation. >In fact, insufficient documentation is probably the biggest problem in This, IMHO, is the biggest problem with open source projects in general. Nobody likes to write documentation...it's thankless, unglorious work. Having said that, though, I must say that I am generally pleased with the completeness of Gramps' documentation. Does it need more depth? yes. Could it be more thorough? yes. Feel free to help us out! :-) >general. Sure, it's not that difficult to figure out how to get going >in gramps, but a tutorial showing how to implement good genealogical >practices in gramps would be very welcome. Are you speaking about *teaching* good genealogical practices, or how to use them in Gramps? I think these could be two separate pieces of work... >Specific areas that newbies would really find useful: [list snipped] These are really good ideas. If I may follow this notion with another question to the developers at-large: Should this be a separate tutorial document, or should the present documentation be expanded? I would lean a little on the side of simply enhancing the present documentation by adding examples or "deeper" explanations of how and why things are done the way the are. >Why don't I start such a beast? Frankly, because I am a lone >genealogist (no connection to any local genealogy groups I could ask >for suggestions) who is just getting started and don't know enough >yet. If someone starts a tutorial, I would definitely help. Well, some of your ideas regarding data-entry were certainly within your grasp. I would suggest reading the current documentation, and seeing where it falls short in your opinion, and add in things that you have discovered beneficial through personal experience. The gramps-manual.sgml file is what you want to edit; sgml is a simple markup language, that can essentially be treated as plain text. Let me know if you need further guidance, -Don _________________________________________________ Donald A. Peterson | dpe...@en... Ph.D. Research Associate | Dept. of Chemistry | PH: (541) 737-7079 Oregon St. University | FAX: (541) 737-0480 ------------------------------------------------- |
From: Don A. <dal...@us...> - 2002-06-15 06:25:14
|
I can provide a basic description of how things work, but I would appreciate it if someone could clean it up and make it more intelligible. I'm not a very good writer. Don On Fri, 2002-06-14 at 10:22, dpe...@ne... wrote: > On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, James A. Treacy had this to say: > > >On Fri, Jun 14, 2002 at 06:52:57AM -0600, Don Allingham wrote: > >> Well, not necessarily contemplating a change. I've had a few comments > >> that the current model is too confusing. This leads to one of two > >> problems: > >> > >> 1) The model is not correct or difficult to use. > >> 2) The interface is confusing. > > > >My opinion is that there is simply insufficient documentation. It took > >a while before it dawned on me that a base + specific reference model > > This happened to me as well. I think it would definitely be good to add > more information about sourcing to the documentation. > > >In fact, insufficient documentation is probably the biggest problem in > > This, IMHO, is the biggest problem with open source projects in general. > Nobody likes to write documentation...it's thankless, unglorious work. > Having said that, though, I must say that I am generally pleased > with the completeness of Gramps' documentation. Does it need more depth? > yes. Could it be more thorough? yes. Feel free to help us out! :-) > > >general. Sure, it's not that difficult to figure out how to get going > >in gramps, but a tutorial showing how to implement good genealogical > >practices in gramps would be very welcome. > > Are you speaking about *teaching* good genealogical practices, or how to > use them in Gramps? I think these could be two separate pieces of work... > > >Specific areas that newbies would really find useful: > [list snipped] > > These are really good ideas. If I may follow this notion with another > question to the developers at-large: Should this be a separate tutorial > document, or should the present documentation be expanded? I would lean a > little on the side of simply enhancing the present documentation by adding > examples or "deeper" explanations of how and why things are done the way > the are. > > >Why don't I start such a beast? Frankly, because I am a lone > >genealogist (no connection to any local genealogy groups I could ask > >for suggestions) who is just getting started and don't know enough > >yet. If someone starts a tutorial, I would definitely help. > > Well, some of your ideas regarding data-entry were certainly within your > grasp. I would suggest reading the current documentation, and seeing > where it falls short in your opinion, and add in things that you have > discovered beneficial through personal experience. The gramps-manual.sgml > file is what you want to edit; sgml is a simple markup language, that can > essentially be treated as plain text. > > Let me know if you need further guidance, > -Don > _________________________________________________ > Donald A. Peterson | dpe...@en... > Ph.D. Research Associate | > Dept. of Chemistry | PH: (541) 737-7079 > Oregon St. University | FAX: (541) 737-0480 > ------------------------------------------------- > > > _______________________________________________________________ > > Don't miss the 2002 Sprint PCS Application Developer's Conference > August 25-28 in Las Vegas - http://devcon.sprintpcs.com/adp/index.cfm?source=osdntextlink > > _______________________________________________ > Gramps-devel mailing list > Gra...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gramps-devel -- Don Allingham dal...@us... http://gramps.sourceforge.net |
From: Rikke D. G. <rg...@te...> - 2002-06-15 06:33:53
|
On 2002.06.14 23:23 Don Allingham wrote: > I can provide a basic description of how things work, but I would > appreciate it if someone could clean it up and make it more > intelligible. I'm not a very good writer. > > Don I've written several tutorials for different programs, as well as working on programs myself. I'm not a python wiz, but I'd be happy to help with writing documentation for Gramps. Writing documentation is something I actually enjoy doing. I must admit though, from what I've seen of Gramps documentation, it's pretty good already (especially in comparison to other projects). I'm willing to work in whatever way on Gramps documentation. One of my tutorials is online and available to the public at www.kplug.org/glade_tutorial if you'd like to see what I've done before. The other tutorials aren't published yet, are are 'in house' so to speak. Cheers, Rikke |
From: Don A. <dal...@us...> - 2002-06-15 21:28:25
|
I'd definitely like to take you up on that. Don Peterson has been focusing on the documentation integration, and I've been focusing most on the code. No one has really been working on the documentation. Don On Sat, 2002-06-15 at 00:31, Rikke D. Giles wrote: > On 2002.06.14 23:23 Don Allingham wrote: > > I can provide a basic description of how things work, but I would > > appreciate it if someone could clean it up and make it more > > intelligible. I'm not a very good writer. > > > > Don > > I've written several tutorials for different programs, as well as > working on programs myself. I'm not a python wiz, but I'd be happy to > help with writing documentation for Gramps. Writing documentation is > something I actually enjoy doing. I must admit though, from what I've > seen of Gramps documentation, it's pretty good already (especially in > comparison to other projects). > > I'm willing to work in whatever way on Gramps documentation. One of my > tutorials is online and available to the public at > www.kplug.org/glade_tutorial if you'd like to see what I've done > before. The other tutorials aren't published yet, are are 'in house' > so to speak. > > Cheers, > > Rikke > > _______________________________________________________________ > > Don't miss the 2002 Sprint PCS Application Developer's Conference > August 25-28 in Las Vegas - http://devcon.sprintpcs.com/adp/index.cfm?source=osdntextlink > > _______________________________________________ > Gramps-devel mailing list > Gra...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gramps-devel -- Don Allingham dal...@us... http://gramps.sourceforge.net |
From: Shane H. <sh...@zo...> - 2002-06-14 19:50:55
|
Don Allingham wrote: > Currently, GRAMPS uses the GEDCOM model for sources. This means that > there is a base source that contains general information. Each time a > source is attached to an item, a source reference is created. The source > reference links to the base source, and provides specific information, > such as page number, text, etc. > > For example, a source might be "The Smith Family" book. A source > reference attached to a person's birth, would indicate the source as > being "The Smith Family" book, and add information such as "page 27" and > a quote from the book. > > Is the the correct model for GRAMPS to use? Have you considered RDF? I'm not fully versed in RDF, but it seems like a great fit, based on the things I've learned about RDF. If I knew more I'd provide an example. ;-) Shane |
From: <ma...@fo...> - 2002-06-14 23:02:19
|
Shane Hathaway <sh...@zo...> said: > Have you considered RDF? I'm not fully versed in RDF, but it seems like > a great fit, based on the things I've learned about RDF. If I knew more > I'd provide an example. ;-) > > Shane > I was under the impression that RDF just provided a framework for expressing relationships between entities. It could be used to describe whatever relationship GRAMPS eventually decides to use for source references, but I don't believe it prescribes any particular style of source references in genealogy sense. Am I missing something here? Anyway, it seems to me that the basic idea of sources and source references isn't something that should go away. I want to store detailed enough information to locate a source document again, but I don't want to keep typing it in every time I use a common source. And you need to be able to store specific information about what page, microfilm # etc. you found a piece of information on, too. I think that the source/sourceref idea is the simplest solution, and it has the added bonus of mapping easily to GEDCOM for interoperability. Instead of changing the basic model, maybe we can do something in the UI to make it more intuitive for people who don't want to think about the complexity and just expect a source to be a single logical entity, as opposed to a source and sourceref pair. Have a mechanism so that you can create a new source/sourceref pair all at once through the UI for simplicity or something. If there's interest in that sort of UI change, I can mock something up over the weekend and post some screenshots. -- Mark Lewis |
From: James A. T. <tr...@de...> - 2002-06-15 05:43:28
|
On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 10:48:35PM -0600, Don Allingham wrote: > Currently, GRAMPS uses the GEDCOM model for sources. This means that > there is a base source that contains general information. Each time a > source is attached to an item, a source reference is created. The source > reference links to the base source, and provides specific information, > such as page number, text, etc. Is the Confidence also part of the GEDCOM model? Should a confidence be assigned to a source or (as I would prefer) to a piece of data, such as a date of birth? What about specifying a confidence to relationships? It is this last that I am most interested in. Additionally, it would be convenient if this was readily apparent when using the Family and Pedigree views. Without this, others viewing your data need to look at your sources in order to see trouble spots. Perhaps red could be used if the confidence in a relationship is below normal. As a good example, there is a tentative connection of my family to the kings of England. Everything is quite solid except for one relationship (which I frankly don't believe). This is almost certainly due to overzealous genealogists (probably professionals trying to look good) and is not uncommon. On the one hand it would be nice to leave the full connection in since people find it interesting. On the other hand, it is misleading. If the relationship is clearly marked as being of low confidence I would feel much better about including the extra people. -- James (Jay) Treacy tr...@de... |
From: Don A. <dal...@us...> - 2002-06-15 06:22:59
|
Confidence is assigned to the source, not the data item. This is also part of the GEDCOM model. In an early version, I had confidence attached to the data, but if you think about it for a while, the GEDCOM method of attaching the confidence to the source is more accurate. Its not really the data that you have a degree of confidence in, but the source of information that you have confidence in. Don On Fri, 2002-06-14 at 23:43, James A. Treacy wrote: > On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 10:48:35PM -0600, Don Allingham wrote: > > Currently, GRAMPS uses the GEDCOM model for sources. This means that > > there is a base source that contains general information. Each time a > > source is attached to an item, a source reference is created. The source > > reference links to the base source, and provides specific information, > > such as page number, text, etc. > > Is the Confidence also part of the GEDCOM model? Should a confidence > be assigned to a source or (as I would prefer) to a piece of data, > such as a date of birth? What about specifying a confidence to > relationships? > > It is this last that I am most interested in. Additionally, it would > be convenient if this was readily apparent when using the Family and > Pedigree views. Without this, others viewing your data need to > look at your sources in order to see trouble spots. Perhaps red could > be used if the confidence in a relationship is below normal. > > As a good example, there is a tentative connection of my family > to the kings of England. Everything is quite solid except for one > relationship (which I frankly don't believe). This is almost certainly > due to overzealous genealogists (probably professionals trying to look > good) and is not uncommon. On the one hand it would be nice to leave > the full connection in since people find it interesting. On the other > hand, it is misleading. If the relationship is clearly marked as being > of low confidence I would feel much better about including the extra > people. > > -- > James (Jay) Treacy > tr...@de... -- Don Allingham dal...@us... http://gramps.sourceforge.net |
From: James A. T. <tr...@de...> - 2002-06-15 14:33:25
|
On Sat, Jun 15, 2002 at 12:21:24AM -0600, Don Allingham wrote: > Confidence is assigned to the source, not the data item. This is also > part of the GEDCOM model. In an early version, I had confidence attached > to the data, but if you think about it for a while, the GEDCOM method of > attaching the confidence to the source is more accurate. Its not really > the data that you have a degree of confidence in, but the source of > information that you have confidence in. That doesn't remove the usefulness of being able to visually see that a given connection is not reliable. It's one thing if you are unsure of a birth or marriage date, but when there is low confidence in a relationship it should be obvious. -- James (Jay) Treacy tr...@de... |