gramps/src/data/tips.xml

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<!-- Tip of the day collection -->
<!-- $Id$ -->

<tips>

<tip><i>You can represent a range of dates by using the format 
of &quot;between January 4, 2000 and March 20, 2003&quot;</i></tip>


<tip>You can drag and drop an image from either the Media View or any 
gallery into another gallery</tip>

<tip>You can add an image to any gallery or the Media View by dragging and
dropping from a file manager or a web browser.</tip>

<tip>You can set the birth order of children in a family even if you do not 
have birth dates by using drag and drop.</tip>

<tip>You can convert an alternate name to the person's preferred name by 
selecting the desired name in the person's name list, bringing up the context
menu by clicking the right mouse button, and selecting from the menu.</tip>

<tip>
<b>ASKING RELATIVES BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE</b>: 
Your oldest relatives could be your
most important source of information. They usually know things about the
family that hasn't been written down. They might tell you nuggets about
people, the information about whom might one day be reduced to numbers. We
often wonder why we didn't write down pieces of information that grandfather
told us while we were young. Don't wait till it's too late... 
</tip>

<tip>
EXAMPLES OF A FAMILY TREE: To see how a Gramps family tree database looks,
check Help &gt; Open example database. You'll find the elaborate Smith family
database, It includes 42 individuals and 15 families, with fairly complete
basic data about many of these individuals.
</tip>

<tip>
THE PEOPLE VIEW: The People view throws up a list of all individuals in the
database. You can sort the listing simply by clicking on numerous headings
such as name, gender, birth date or death date.  Clicking heading the second
time will reverse the sort.
</tip>

<tip>
FILTERING PEOPLE OUT: In the People view, you can 'filter' out individuals
based on certain criteria. Go to the Filter (just to the right of the People
icon) and choose one of the dozen different presets. For instance, all
adopted people in the family tree can be located. People without a birth
date mentioned can also be filtered. To get the results, click on Apply.
</tip>

<tip>
INVERTED FILTERING: You can get another set of results by using the 'invert'
option. For instance, if you choose to filter the 'People with children'
preset filter, and then invert it, you'll find all the people without
children in the family tree.
</tip>

<tip>
LOCATING PEOPLE: In the People view, you can locate any individual by
navigating through the alphabetic tabs of surnames. Then, click on the names
themselves to unfold display of all the individuals with the same last name.
</tip>

<tip>
TO ADD INFORMATION TO SELECTED PEOPLE: First, locate them in the People
view. (Use the alphabetic tabs of surnames, and click on the names to unfold
the display of all individuals sharing the name). Then, go to the Family
view, and add the relevant information.
</tip>

<tip>
THE FAMILY VIEW: The Family view display a family of parents, grandparents
and children along with the birth and death dates (if relevant) and
relationships. You can navigate to nearby relatives with a single click.
</tip>

<tip>
IMPROVING GRAMPS: Users are entitled to request enhancements to GRAMPS. 
Requesting an enhancement can be done either through the gramps-users or
gramps-devel mailing lists, or by creating a Request for Enhancement (RFE) at 
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=25770&amp;atid=385140
The last is preferred.
</tip>

<tip>
WHO WAS BORN WHEN: The 'Compare individual events' tool allows you to
compare data of all (or some of) the individuals in your database. This is
useful, say, if you wish to list the birth-dates of everyone in your
database. For best results, your data needs to be complete.
</tip>

<tip>
WHO'S THE OLDEST OF US ALL? You can find out a lot of statistical
information about your entire family, using the Tools &gt; Utilities &gt; Verify
the database facility. For instance, what was the maximum age of any
individual in the family? Or the largest husband-wife age difference. Or the
minimum age at which anyone in your family ever married. Or even the minimum
age at which a woman bore a child.
</tip>

<tip>
CALCULATING RELATIONSHIPS: This allows you to check if someone else in the
entire family is related (by blood, not marriage) to you. Precise
relationships as well as the common ancestors are reported. See Tools &gt;
Utilities &gt; Relationship calculator.
</tip>

<tip>
USEFUL CODES FOR SURNAMES: SoundEx is a utility that will allow you to type
in a surname, then give you the SoundEx Code for that name.  Knowing the
SoundEx Code for a surname is very helpful for researching Census Data files
(microfiche) at a library or other research facility. To get your Soundex
codes for surnames in your database, go to Tools &gt; Utilities &gt; Generate
SoundEx codes.
</tip>

<tip>
SETTING YOUR PREFERENCES: Edit &gt; Preferences will allow you to choose a
number of settings, determining how your GRAMPS program should work.
Particularly useful are the report preferences (set the format in which you
would like your reports to appear, and in which directory these should be
stored).
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS REPORTS: GRAMPS offers a wide number of reports that can be
generated. The Text Reports are particularly useful if you want to send out
the results of your family tree to members of the family, via e-mail.
</tip>

<tip>
STARTING A NEW FAMILY TREE: The best way to start a new family tree is
probably to add-in all the members of the family into the database (use Edit
&gt; Add or click on the Add button under the People menu). Then go about
tracing the relationships among them all under the Family menu.
</tip>

<tip>
TRACING RELATIONSHIPS: People from an existing database can easily be all
linked into the family. Go to Family, and choose the second button to the
right of the Relationship window. (The first button to the right of the
relationship window adds a new person to the database, and adds to a new
relationship.)
</tip>

<tip>
ASKING RELATIONS FOR DETAILS: To get inputs for building your family tree,
ask key members of your extended family (including other families connected
to yours via marriage) to send in information. Most important is the full
name, date and places of birth and death (if expired), relationship within
the family.
</tip>

<tip>
UNSURE ABOUT BIRTH-DATES? If you're unsure about the birth-dates about
individuals in your family, GRAMS allows you to enter a wide range, based on
a guess or an estimate. For instance, &quot;about 1908&quot; is also a valid entry.  for a
birth date in GRAMPS. Subsequently, the precise dates could be included once
it is available.
</tip>

<tip>
DUPLICATE ENTRIES: Tools &gt; Database Processing &gt; Find possible duplicate
people allows you to located (and merge) entries of the same person entered
more than once in the database.
</tip>

<tip>
INTERNAL ERROR: Encountered an 'internal error' while launching GRAMPS? It
could be the known bug in the 1.0.6 release. The 1.0.7 release
(http://sf.net/projects/gramps) fixes this bug.

FIXING 1.0.6: To fix your 1.0.6 install by
    '$ gconftool-2 -s /apps/gramps/show-calendar -t bool 0'
    '$ gconftool-2 -s /apps/gramps/use-lds -t bool 0'
as the user running gramps (not root!!!)
</tip>

<tip>
ADDING A SIBLING: To add siblings in Gramps, make yourself or your spouse an
active person (i.e. navigate to yourself or your spouse). Then switch to the
Family View and add a new child by clicking the button second from the top on
the right of the Children list (the &quot;New&quot; button). Enter the data for the
new person and click OK.
</tip>

<tip>
EDITING THE RELATIONSHIP OF A CHILD: You can edit the relationship of the
child to each parent by selecting the child, right-clicking, and choosing
&quot;Edit the child-parent relationship&quot; item. If this is not your child but
your wife's child, you would select &quot;Birth&quot; in relationship to her and
&quot;Stepchild&quot; in relationship to you.
</tip>

<tip>
ADDING A CHILD: If the child is already in the database, then you don't need
to add him to the database. Just add the child to the family, which can be
done by pressing the third button from the top (the &quot;Select&quot; button). Then,
select the person from the list.
</tip>

<tip>
SHOW-ALL CHECKBUTTON: The list of people you can add into a family is
filtered to display only people who could possibly be the child (based on he
birth-dates). In case GRAMPS is wrong in making this choice, you can always
over-ride that filtering by checking &quot;Show all&quot; checkbutton.
</tip>

<tip>
KEYBINDINGS: GRAMP's manual is quite elaborate and well written; it also is
detailed about keybindings (in a separate appendix) and other matters. Check
it out.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS-USERS: Want to answer your queries about GRAMPS? Check out the
gramps-users list. Many users are on the list, so you're likely to get an
answer faster. If you need to ask questions -- use either gramps-devel or
gramps-users at lists.sf.net, as appropriate for your questions.
</tip>

<tip>
TIPS OF THE DAY: GRAMPS's development version has the option of popping up a
window with the tip of the day about the use of GRAMPS. The tip is chosen
randomly from the pool of tips. To add your own tip, send it in to
gramps-users@lists.sf.net
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS (Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Programming System)
offers you a well-designed user interface to make entering data easy, and
browser-like controls to allow you to navigate your family tree with ease.
</tip>

<tip>
DIFFERENT VIEWS: There are six different views for navigating your family:
People, Family, Pedigree, Sources, Places, Media. Each helps you to achieve
one or more specific tasks.
</tip>

<tip>
CHANGING A CHILD/PARENT RELATIONSHIP: In the Family view, a right-click on
the Children allows you to edit the child/parent relationship. This is used
to mark out children as adopted or step-children.
</tip>

<tip>
BOOKMARKING INDIVIDUALS: To 'bookmark' individuals in your database,
navigate to them using the Family view, then right-click and 'add bookmark'.
You can visit these bookmarks much like in your browser, simply via Bookmark
&gt; Go to bookmark.
</tip>

<tip>
DATES: Incorrect date formats will show up with the red button alongside the
date. Green means okay, and amber signifies acceptable.
</tip>

<tip>
LISTING EVENTS: Events in the life of any individual in the database may be
added via the Person &gt; Edit Person &gt; Events option. This space can be used
to include a wide range of options ranging from adoptions, to baptisms (and
other religious ceremonies), burials, causes of death, Census listings,
degrees earned in education, divorce filings, elections, emigration,
military service, nobility titles, number of marriages, occupations,
ordination, property, religion, retirement, wills, etc.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS' People view gives you a list of all individuals in the database. You
can sort the listing by differing priorities simply by clicking on headings
like name, gender, bate date or death date.
</tip>

<tip>
CHANGING PREFERRED NAME: If a person has several names, it is very easy
to manage these names in Gramps.  Find the person in the Family view,
double-click on the record, and open Names tab.  You can add different
types of names here, like Married Name, Birth Name, etc.  Selecting a
preferred name is just a matter of right-clicking on the name and
choosing the only item in the menu.
</tip>

</tips>