RE: [Gramps-devel] Advanced Web Page Plugin

[Henry H. <hen...@we...>]

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Alex Roitman [mailto:sh...@al...] 
>> Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 4:28 PM
>> 
>> GRAMPS project announces the $100 bounty for creating an Advanced
>> Web Page plugin for gramps. The new plugin will allow producing
>> the advanced web sites aiming at the best presentation of the
>> genealogical data.

A while back I wrote a small web app (in Perl) that displays genealogical
data from a simple database.  One thing I never got around to was writing a
system for data entry.  I coded the data I had at the time into a
spreadsheet and then imported that into the database, not the most efficient
or user friendly approach.  Off and on since then I've done bits and pieces
towards creating a data entry piece but never really got it working.  It
would still be nice to have something that allows data entry through a
browser since that will allow users on any platform to do data entry
(assuming you trust your users).  Recently, however, I've been looking at
GRAMPS and installed it last weekend.  It looks quite good and I'm certainly
more likely to use it for data entry than what I've been doing.  I wrote a
script that dumped my database data into gramps compliant XML and can now do
my data entry there.

The next step is to either write a script that will move the data back to my
database for web viewing or modify my web app to use the XML directly.
Then, I could use GRAMPS for data entry and still view the data on the web.
I have never written anything in Python but this might be the excuse I need
to learn and I could convert my web script to a python script.  I understand
that this is not the same thing as a GRAMPS plug-in and I don't know enough
about GRAMPS yet to do that (even if I knew Python).  One thing at a time.
At this point, I'm not really volunteering to work on this Advanced Web Page
plug-in since there are too many differences between what I've done and what
needs doing.

In any case, I've put together a sample of what my system looks like for
those who are interested in putting a family tree on the web.  It can be
found here:
<http://www.dotrose.com/cgi-bin/misc/familytree/tree.pl?page=main&id=1>.
With all the concern over privacy of personal information, I've populated a
demo version of the database with a few English kings and their families.
It only has a few generations of data and even the data that is there is
incomplete (i.e. only four of Henry VIII wives) and possibly not even
accurate, but it should be enough to give you an idea of how the system
works.

Personally, I like my navigational approach (well, I would, wouldn't I?)
where you see a family at a time based around either a couple (with their
parents and children) or an individual (and their parents).  Click on a
person's name to "center" that individual.  This includes swapping spouses
left to right.  For instance, click on Arthur Tudor.  You will see him
alongside his wife, Katherine of Aragon.  Now click on Katherine and you
will see her with her two marriages (Arthur first and then his younger
brother Henry).  Now click on Henry and you will see the first four of his
marriages.

It's certainly not complete and there is a lot of GRAMPS data that it won't
yet support but I wrote most of it back in 2001.  Anyway, I'd be interested
in your feedback and constructive criticism of my system.  If I can make it
work directly from GRAMPS data and include all the various data elements it
might become quite useful to GRAMPS users.

-- 
Henry Hartley