From: Alex R. <sh...@al...> - 2004-05-23 04:49:15
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On Sat, May 22, 2004 at 04:51:51PM -0700, Mitchell Ferschweiler wrote: > Okay the feature list has been updated. My major changes are in blue. I've > experimenting with bolding things. What do people think? If it looks good, > there are only a few more changes and it should be complete. My comments, in no particular order: * Boldface works nice in my opinion * Rich set of tools: guys, I'm not hung up on this very phrase. English is not my native language, so please correct if it does not sound good. However, the main comment here is that we also have research tools, not only checks and repairs. For example, the custom filter editor is a tool (of the rich set we have :-). So is the tool comparing events for a set of people. This one can help you determine timing of certain events and maybe even determine/rule out relations: if one=20 person's death is before another person's birth, they can't possibly be= =20 spouses, or parent/child to each other, etc. * Web family tree link is the wrong one -- I have sent the correct one later on, here it is: http://sward.users.netlink.co.uk/family/tree/ * Privacy options allow more than just restricting info on the living people. Users can also mark various records as private and those will be omitted from reports/exports. * Custom filters are not used as the display filters. Instead, they can be used in all exports and some reports (most notably, web page). * GEDCOM export: I would stress that, in addition to supporting 5.5 standard (which no commercial software supports completely, btw), we also support most commercial "extensions" (i.e. breakages) of the GEDCOM. Virtually, every commercial genealogical software extends (breaks) GEDCOM and GRAMPS can deal with this reasonably well. * GRAMPS package: also useful for porting data to a different system(s). * Reports: In addition to the default styles, users can create their own styles, separately for each report type. This allows users to have their preferred markup for headers, section headers, notes, lists, etc. * Graphs: I doubt that any software can create graphs unlimited in=20 functionality. I understand that the point Steve was making was that our graphs are not as feature-rich as commercial ones, but it's not totally unusable :-) I would put that in the Limitations section. Something like "Charts can definitely use improvement". * Unicode support. I think the provision in parenthesis can be safely dropped. Gramps depends on gnome libraries which guarantee proper font selection based on the needed glyphs. If people screw up their GNOME install it's not our fault, but it should work out of the box, so that no additional packages need to be installed. Am I wrong here? * Limited DnD: I think it is present when it makes sense, so it's pretty reasonable if you ask me (pictures can be DnD-ed). As for DnD across databases, the point is moot since one cannot open two databases! So, I would ditch DnD limitation and instead have "Only one database can be opened at one time." in the Limitations section. * To that end, the Features in Progress section may have "Having more than one database open at one time", since this should be made possible in the development version.=20 * Another feature currently overlooked: we have a history-based browser-like navigation capabilities. This includes Back, Forward, and Home buttons, corresponding shortcuts, corresponding context menu items (right-click),= =20 history section in Go menu, as well as back and forward portions of=20 the history (right-click on back and forward buttons).=20 * Book report: this is present in very few commercial programs. I think it is very useful, since one can collect many reports/charts in a single document. That way you can send a book to your parents with chapters devoted to each of them, each chapter having many reports/charts. One can also include custom text (notes, epigraphs, dedications),=20 title (for the whole book, or chapter, or every report) with the optional picture. Great thing to impress your Aunt Martha :-) * Lots of shortcuts which can help navigation. Least-known ones are for the family view and depend on where the focus is. The details are in the manual (keyboard bindings appendix). This can go into the features of the interface. I think this came out to be a huge list. Sorry for not picking things earlier, it was akind of a moving target. Any comments concerning my=20 comments? Alex --=20 Alexander Roitman http://ebner.neuroscience.umn.edu/people/alex.html Dept. of Neuroscience, Lions Research Building 2001 6th Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455 Tel (612) 625-7566 FAX (612) 626-9201 |