gramps/src/data/tips.xml

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<!-- Tip of the day collection -->
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<tips>

<tip>A range of dates can be given by using the format 
&quot;between January 4, 2000 and March 20, 2003&quot;
</tip>

<tip>
In most cases double clicking on a name, source, place or media entry
will bring up a window to allow you to edit the object. Note that the
result can be dependent on context. For example, in the Family View
clicking on a parent or child will bring up the relationship editor.
</tip>

<tip>An image can be added to any gallery or the Media View by dragging and
dropping it from a file manager or a web browser.
</tip>

<tip>Birth order of children in a family can be set, even if they do not
have birth dates, by using drag and drop.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Talk to Relatives Before It Is Too Late</b>: 
Your oldest relatives can be your most important source of information.
They usually know things about the family that haven't been written down.
They might tell you nuggets about
people that may one day lead to a new avenue of research.
At the very least, you will get to hear some great stories.
Don't forget to record the conversations!
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Example of a Family Tree</b>: To see an example of what a family
looks like in GRAMPS, check <b>Help &gt; Open example database</b>.
You will then be viewing the elaborate Smith family database, which
includes 42 individuals and 15 families, with fairly complete
data about many of the individuals.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Filtering People</b>: In the People View, you can 'filter' individuals
based on many criteria. Go to the Filter (just to the right of the People
icon) and choose one of the dozen different presets. For example, 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 Apply.
If the filter controls are not visible, enable them by choosing
<b>View &gt; Filter</b>.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Inverted Filtering</b>:
Filters can easily be reversed by using the 'invert' option.
For instance, by inverting the 'People with children' filter you can
select all people without children.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Locating People</b>: By default, each surname in the People View is
listed only once. By clicking on the arrow to the left of a name, the list
will expand to show all individuals with that last name.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>The Family View</b>: The Family View is used to display a typical
family unit---the parents, spouses and children of an individual.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Shifting a Family View</b>: Changing the Active Person in
the Family View is easy. A spouse can be made the Active Person by
clicking the button just to the right of the Active Person. A father
can be made the Active Person by clicking on the arrow to the right of
their name. A child can be made the Active Person by selecting them
from the Children list and then clicking the arrow button to the right
of the Children.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Who Was Born When</b>: 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.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS comes with a rich set of tools. These allows you to undertake
operations such as checking database for errors and consistency, as well as
research and analysis tools such as event comparison, finding duplicate
people, interactive descendant browser, and others.
All tools can be accessed through the <b>Tools</b> menu.
</tip>

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

<tip>
<b>SoundEx can help with family research</b>:
SoundEx solves a long standing problem in genealogy---how to handle
spelling variations. The SoundEx utility takes a surname and generates
a simplified form that is equivalent for similar sounding names.
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 the SoundEx codes for surnames in
your database, go to <b>Tools &gt; Utilities &gt; Generate SoundEx codes</b>.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Setting Your Preferences</b>: Not happy with some default behavior of GRAMPS?
<b>Edit &gt; Preferences</b> lets you to modify a
number of settings, allowing you to tailor GRAMPS to your needs.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>GRAMPS Reports</b>: GRAMPS offers a wide variety of reports.
The Text Reports are particularly useful if you want to send
the results of your family tree to members of the family via email.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Starting a New Family Tree</b>: A good way to start a new family tree is
to enter all the members of the family into the database (use <b>Edit
&gt; Add</b> or click on the Add button under the People menu). Then go to
the Family View and create relationships between people.
Then go about tracing the relationships among them all under the Family menu.
</tip>

<tip>
Unsure what a button does? Simply hold the mouse over a button and a tooltip
will appear.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Unsure of a Date?</b> If you're unsure about the date an event occurred
(for example birth or death), GRAMPS allows you to enter a wide
range of date formats based on a guess or an estimate. For instance,
&quot;about 1908&quot; is a valid entry for a birth date in GRAMPS.
See section 3.7.2.2 of the GRAMPS manual for a complete description of
date entry options.
</tip>

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

<tip>
The 'merge' function allows you to combine separately listed people into
one. This is very useful for combining two databases with overlapping
people, or combining erroneously entered differing names for one individual.
</tip>

<tip>
To easily merge two people, select them both (a second person can be selected
by holding the Control key while clicking) and clicking on <b>Edit &gt; Fast
Merge</b>.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS maintains a list of previous Active People. You can move forward and
backward through the list using <b>Go &gt; Forward</b> and <b>Go &gt;
Back</b>.
</tip>

<tip>
Tired of having to take your hand off the keyboard to use the mouse?
Many functions in GRAMPS have keyboard shortcuts. If one exists for a
function it is displayed on the right side of the menu.
</tip>

<tip>
Don't forget to read the GRAMPS manual, <b>Help &gt; User Manual</b>.
The developers have worked hard to make most operations intuitive
but the manual is full of information that will make your time spent
on genealogy more productive.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Adding Children</b>: To add children in GRAMPS make either of the parents 
the Active Person then switch to the Family View.
If the child is already in the database, click on the third button down to the
right of the Children list.
If the person is not already in the database, click on the second button down
to the right of the Children list. After the child's information is entered
they will automatically be listed as a child of the Active Person.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Editing The Relationship of a Child</b>: Not all children are the related by
birth to their parents. You can edit the relationship of a
child to each parent by selecting the child, right-clicking, and choosing
&quot;Edit the child parent relationship&quot;.
Relationships can be any of Birth, Adopted, Stepchild, Sponsored, Foster, or
Unknown.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Show All Checkbutton</b>: When adding a spouse or child, the
list of people shown is filtered to display only people who could
realistically fit the role (based on dates in the database). In case
GRAMPS is wrong in making this choice, you can override that
filter by checking the &quot;Show All&quot; checkbutton.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>GRAMPS Manual</b>: The GRAMPS manual is quite elaborate and well written.
It includes details on keybindings and includes some useful tips that will
help you in your genealogy work.
Check it out.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Improving GRAMPS</b>: Users are encouraged 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 
Filing an RFE is preferred.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>GRAMPS Mailing Lists</b>: Want answers to your queries about GRAMPS?
Check out the gramps-users list.
Many people are on the list, so you're likely to get an answer quickly.
If you have questions related to the development of GRAMPS,
try gramps-devel. Information on both mailing lists can be found at
lists.sf.net.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Contributing to GRAMPS</b>:
Want to help with GRAMPS but can't program? Not a problem. A project
as large as GRAMPS requires people with a wide variety of skills.
Contributions can vary from writing documentation to testing development
versions to helping with the web site.
Start by subscribing to the gramps developers mailing list, gramps-devel
and introducing yourself.
Subscription information can be found at lists.sf.net.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS is the Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Program System.
It is a full-featured genealogy program letting you store, edit, and
research genealogical data. Gramps database back end is so robust that
some users are managing genealogies containing hundreds of thousands of
people.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Different Views</b>: 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>
<b>Bookmarking Individuals</b>:
The Bookmark menu at the top of the window is a convenient place to store
the names of frequently used individuals. Clicking on a bookmarked
individual will make that person the Active Person.
To create a bookmark for a person, make them the Active Person, right click on
their name and click on 'add bookmark'.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Incorrect Dates</b>: Everyone occasionally enters dates with a nonvalid
format.
Incorrect date formats will show up with the red button next to the
date. Green means okay, and amber signifies acceptable.
The Date Selection dialog can be invoked by clicking on the colored button.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Listing Events</b>: Events in the life of any individual may be
added to the database via the <b>Person &gt; Edit Person &gt;
Events</b> 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, elections, emigration, military service, nobility titles,
occupations, ordination, property, religion, retirement, wills, etc.
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Changing The Preferred Name</b>:
It is easy to manage people with several names in GRAMPS.
Make the person the Active Person,
doubleclick on the record, and select the Names tab.  Different
types of names can be added. For example, 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>

<tip>
The Pedigree View displays a traditional pedigree chart.
Hold the mouse over an individual to see more information about them or
right click on an individual to view a menu to quickly access their spouses,
siblings, children, or parents.
</tip>

<tip>
The Sources View shows a list of all sources in a single window. 
Double-click on each to edit, add notes, and to see which individuals
reference the source.
</tip>

<tip>
The Places View shows a list of all places in the database. 
The list can be sorted by a number of different criteria, such as City,
County or State.
</tip>

<tip>
The Media View shows a list of all media entered in the database. These
can be graphic images, videos, sound clips, spreadsheets, documents, and
more.
</tip>

<tip>
Filters allow you to limit the people seen in the People View. In addition
to the many preset filters, Custom Filters 
can be created that allow you to create filters limited only by your
imagination.
Custom filters can be created from <b>Tools &gt; Utilities &gt; Custom
Filter Editor</b>.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS allows you to import from, and export to, GEDCOM format. There is
extensive support for the industry standard GEDCOM version 5.5, so you can
exchange GRAMPS information to and from users of most other genealogy
programs.
</tip>

<tip>
You can convert your data into a GRAMPS package, which is a
compressed file containing your family tree data and includes all
other files used by the database, such as images. This file is
completely portable so is useful for backups or sharing with other
GRAMPS users. This format has advantages over GEDCOM in that no
information is ever lost in exporting and importing.
</tip>

<tip>
Make your data portable --- your family tree data and media can be exported
directly to the GNOME file manager (Nautilus), for burning onto a CD.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS can export data to the Web Family Tree (WFT) format. This format
allows a family tree to be displayed online using a single file, instead
of many html files.
</tip>

<tip>
You can easily export your family tree to a web page. Select the entire
database, family lines or selected individuals to a collection of web pages
ready for upload to the World Wide Web.
</tip>

<tip>
The best way to report a bug in GRAMPS is to use the GRAMPS Bug Tracker
at Sourceforge, http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=25770&amp;atid=385137
</tip>

<tip>
The GRAMPS homepage is at http://gramps-project.org/
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS has some unique features, including the ability to input any
piece of information directly into GRAMPS.
All data in the data base can be rearranged/manipulated to assist the
user in doing research, analysis and correlation with the potential of
filling relationship gaps.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS helps you to keep personal information secure by allowing you to
mark information as private. Data marked as private can be excluded from
reports and data exports.
</tip>

<tip>
Be accurate when recording genealogical information. Don't make assumptions
while recording primary information; write it exactly as you see it. Use
bracketed comments to indicate your additions, deletions or comments. Use of
the Latin 'sic' is recommended to confirm the accurate transcription of what
appears to be an error in a source.
</tip>

<tip>
You can link any electronic media (including non-text information) and
other file types to your GRAMPS family tree. 
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS allows you to generate a number of reports (both text and graphical)
based on your genealogical information. There is great flexibility in
selecting what people are included in the reports as well as the output
format (html, pdf, OpenOffice, RTF, AbiWord, KWord, LaTeX and plain text).
Experiment with the reports under the <b>Reports</b> menu to get an idea
of how powerful GRAMPS is.
</tip>

<tip>
Custom reports can be created by advanced users under the "plugin" system.
More information on custom reports can be found at
http://developers.gramps-project.org
</tip>

<tip>
The Book report, <b>Reports &gt; Books &gt; Book Report</b>, allows users
to collect a variety of reports into a single document. This single report
is easier to distribute than multiple reports, especially when printed.
</tip>

<tip>
Interested in getting notified when a new version of GRAMPS is released?
Join the gramps-announce mailing list at 
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gramps-announce
</tip>

<tip>
<b>Good genealogy tip</b>: Information collected about your family is only as
good as the source it came from.
Take time and trouble to record all the
details of where the information came from. Whenever possible get a copy of 
original documents.
</tip>

<tip>
Go from what you know to what you do not. Always record everything that is
known before making conjecture. Often the facts at hand suggest plenty of
direction for more research. Don't waste time looking through thousands of
records hoping for a trail when you have other unexplored leads.
</tip>

<tip>
Genealogy isn't only about dates and names. It is about people. Be
descriptive. Include the <b>why</b> of how things happened, and how descendants
might have been shaped by the events they went through. Narratives go a long
way in making your family history come alive.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS has been translated to 15 languages. If GRAMPS supports your
language and it is not being displayed, set the default language on
your machine and restart GRAMPS.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS has been designed so that new translations can easily be added with
little development effort. If you are interested in participating please
email gramps-devel@lists.sf.net
</tip>

<tip>
Relationship calculators in GRAMPS are available in ten languages.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS offers full Unicode support. Characters for all languages are
properly displayed.
</tip>

<tip>
Anyone can be chosen as the 'home person' in GRAMPS. Use <b>Edit -> Set Home
Person</b>. The home person is the person who is selected when the database is
opened or when the home button is pressed.
</tip>

<tip>
Multiple names can be specified for individuals. Examples are birth name,
marriage name or aliases.
</tip>

<tip>An alternate name can be selected as a 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>
GRAMPS is written in a computer language called Python using the GTK and GNOME
libraries for the graphical interface.
GRAMPS is supported on any computer system where these programs have been
ported.
</tip>

<tip>
The Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) development model means
GRAMPS can be extended by any programmer since all of the source code is
freely available under its license.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS is freely distributable under the General Public License, see
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#GPL
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS works even when using KDE, as long as the required GNOME libraries are
installed.
</tip>

<tip>
To run GRAMPS, you need to have GNOME installed. But you do not need to be
running the GNOME desktop.
</tip>

<tip>
GRAMPS makes every effort to maintain compatibility with GEDCOM, the general
standard of recording genealogical information. Filters exist that make
importing and exporting GEDCOM files trivial.
</tip>

</tips>