# Frequently Asked Questions

This appendix contains the list of questions that frequently come up in mailing list discussions and forums. This list is by no means complete. If you would like to add questions/answers to this list, please email your suggestions to gramps-devel@lists.sf.net

What is &app;?

  &app; is the Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Program System. In other words, it is a personal genealogy program letting you store, edit, and research genealogical data using the powers of your computer.

Where do I get it and how much does it cost?

  &app; can be downloaded from http://sf.net/projects/gramps at no charge. &app; is an Open Source project covered by the GNU General Public License. You have full access to the source code and are allowed to distribute the program and source code freely.

Does it work with Windows (tm)?

  No. &app; uses the GTK and GNOME libraries. While the GTK libraries have been ported to Windows, the GNOME libraries have not. This, however, may change in the future.

Does it work with the Mac?

  The Fink project (http://fink.sf.net) has ported an old version of &app; (0.8.0) to OSX. The Mac OSX port is not directly supported by the &app; project, primarily because none of the &app; developers have access to Mac OSX.

  The GNOME 2 version of &app; (0.9.x) does not appear to have been ported by the Fink project. Please contact the Fink project for more information.

Does it work with KDE?

  Yes, as long as the required GNOME libraries are installed.

Do I really have to have GNOME installed?

  Yes, but you do not have to be running the GNOME desktop.

What version of GNOME do I need?

  The latest versions of gramps (0.9.0 and higher) require GNOME 2.0 or higher. Previous versions required GNOME 1.X.

Is &app; compatible with other genealogical software (GenApps)?

  &app; makes every effort to maintain compatibility with GEDCOM, the general standard of recording genealogical information. We have import and export filters that enable &app; to read and write GEDCOM files.

  It is important to understand that the GEDCOM standard is poorly implemented -- virtually every genealogical software has its own "flavor" of GEDCOM. As we learn about new flavor, the import/export filters can be created very quickly. However, finding out about the unknown flavors requires user feedback. Please feel free to inform us about any GEDCOM flavor not supported by &app;, and we will do our best to support it!

Can &app; read files created by GenApp X?

  See above.

Can &app; write files readable by GenApp X?

  See above.

Can &app; print a genealogical tree for my family?

  Yes. Different people have different ideas of what a genealogical tree is. Some think of it as a chart going from the distant ancestor and listing all his/her descendants and their families. Others think it should be a chart going from the person back in time, listing the ancestors and their families. Yet other people think of a table, text report, etc.

  &app; can produce any of the above, and many more different charts and reports. Moreover, the plugin architechture enables users (you) to create their own plugins which could be new reports, charts, or research tools.

In what formats can &app; output its reports?

  Text reports are available in HTML, PDF, AbiWord, KWord, LaTeX, RTF, and OpenOffice formats. Graphical reports (charts and diagrams) are available in PostScript, PDF, SVG, OpenOffice and GraphViz formats.

Is &app; compatible with the Internet?

  &app; can store web addresses and direct your browser to them. It can import data that you download from the Internet. It can export data that you could send over the Internet. &app; is familiar with the standard file formats widely used on the Internet (e.g. JPEG, PNG, and GIF images, MP3, OGG, and WAV sound files, QuickTime, MPEG, and AVI movie files, etc). Other than that, there is little that a genealogical program can do with the Internet :-)

Can I create custom reports/filters/whatever?

  Yes. There are many levels of customization. One is creating or modifying the templates used for the reports. This gives you some control over the fonts, colors, and some layout of the reports. You can also use &app; controls in the report dialogs to tell what contents should be used for a particular report. In addition to this, you have an ability to create your own filters -- this is useful in selecting people based on criteria set by you. You can combine these filters to create new, more complex filters. Finally, you have an option to create your own plugins. These may be new reports, research tools, import/export filters, etc. This assumes some knowledge of programming in Python.

What standards does &app; support?

  The nice thing about the standards is that there never is a shortage of them :-). &app; is tested to support the following flavors of GEDCOM: GEDCOM5.5, Brother's Keeper, Family Origins, Familty Tree Maker, Ftree, GeneWeb, Legacy, Personal Ancestral File, Pro-Gen, Reunion, and Visual Genealogie.

What is the maximum database size (bytes) &app; can handle?

  &app; has no hard limits on the size of a database that it can handle. In reality, however, there are practical limits. Currently &app; loads all data into memory, so the limiting factor tends to be the available memory on the system.

How many people can &app; database handle?

  We have found that on a typical system, &app; tends to bog down after the database has around 15,000 people. Again, this is dependant on how much memory you have.

Why is &app; running so slowly?

  If &app; seems too slow to you, it is most likely that you have a large database. Currently, &app; loads all the database into memory, therefore large databases tend to be less than responsive. Specifically, the system can be virtually brought to its knees if swapping is needed for &app;' data.

  This will be addressed in the next stable release following version 1.0. Temporarily, adding more memory could make a huge difference, but we realize that this is a poor way of treating the problem. If you would like to help with the implementation of the real database backend, please don't hesitate to email us at gramps-devel@lists.sf.net

My database is really big. Is there a way around loading all the data into memory?

  Currently, there is no way around it. However, this is our biggest priority after releasing version 1.0. The real database backend will be incorporated in the next stable release (1.2) which will dramatically improve performance in both speed and memory usage.

I want to rerun the Startup dialog (druid). How do I do this?

  &app; keeps a flag in the GNOME configuration database to indicate that the startup dialog has been run. To cause &app; to rerun this, the flag needs to be reset. This can be done with the following command:

  `gconftool-2 -u /apps/gramps/startup`

Why can I not add/remove/edit columns to the lists in People View and Family View?

  This will be addressed after the TreeModelSort bug is fixed in pygtk, see http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125172 for the details. Once the patch is committed and incorporated into pygtk, we will add the ability to add/remove/edit sortable columns.

I would like to contribute to &app; by writing my favorite report. How do I do that?

  The easiest way to contribute to reports, filters, tools, etc. is to copy an existing &app; report, filter, or tool. If you can create what you want by modifying existing code -- great! If your idea does not fit into the logic of any existing &app; tool, the following page may provide some help in writing your own plugin from scratch.

  If you need more help or would like to discuss your idea with us, please do not hesitate to contact us at gramps-devel@lists.sf.net

  To test your work in progress, you may save your plugin under $HOME/.gramps/plugins directory and it should be found and imported on startup. The correctly written plugin will register itself with &app;, create menu item, and so on.

  If you are happy with your plugin and would like to contribute your code back to the &app; project, you are very welcome to do so by contacting us at gramps-devel@lists.sf.net

I found a bug and I want it fixed right now! What do I do?

  The best thing you can do is to fix the bug and send the patch to gramps-devel@lists.sf.net :-)

  The next best thing would be to submit a good bug report. This can be done in one of the two ways: (1) send your report to gramps-bugs@lists.sf.net or (2) file your report with the bug tracker system at http://sf.net/tracker/?group_id=25770&atid=385137 (this function is also available by selecting Help Report a bug from gramps main menu).

  A good bug report would include:

  - Version of gramps you were using when you encountered the bug (available through Help About menu item).

  - Language under which gramps was run (available by executing

    `echo $LANG`

    in your terminal).

  - Symptoms indicating that this is indeed a bug.

  - Any Traceback messages, error messages, warnings, etc, that showed up in your terminal or a in separate traceback window.

  Most problems can be fixed quickly provided there is enough information. To ensure this, please follow up on your bug reports. In particular, if you file a bug report with sf.net bug tracker, PLEASE log in to sf.net before filing (register your free account if you don't have one). Then we will have a way of contacting you should we need more information. If you choose to file your report anonymously, at least check every so often whether your report page has something new posted, as it probably would.

  If the above explanations seem vague, please follow this link.

It is obvious that &app; absolutely needs to become a (client-server/web-based/PHP/weblog/Javascript/C++/distributed/KDE/Motif/Tcl/Win32/C#/You-name-it) application. When is this going to happen?

  The surest way to see it happen is to get it done by yourself. Since &app; is free/open source, nobody prevents you from taking all of the code and continuing its development in whatever direction you see fit. In doing so, you may consider giving your new project another name to avoid confusion with the continuing &app; development. If you would like the &app; project to provide advice, expertise, filters, etc., we will gladly cooperate with your new project, to ensure compatibility or import/export options to your new format of a project.

  If, however, you would like the &app; project to to adopt your strategy, you would need to convince &app; developers that your strategy is good for &app; and superior to the present development strategy.

  HINT: if &app; developers are still not convinced after about three messages sent to gramps-devel, maybe you are better off on your own rather than with a company of retards who can't fully realize the potential of your great idea :-)