Introducing gPrime

gPrime is a new browser-based genealogy program descended from Gramps, and this is a new blog to describe and discuss it. gPrime is designed to become a modern, easy-to-use genealogy program for the 21st century. Specifically it is designed:

• for collaboration – multi-user ready
• powerful, easy to use search – select exactly what you want to see with a Google-like text search
• with security in mind, to keep your information safe and private
• for very large family trees
• for future generations
• for long term and modern technologies – robust database and storage formats
• for the modern genealogist, including flexible gender categories
• browser-based interface – works locally, on a server, and on mobile platforms such as Android, iPhones, iPads, etc.

gPrime uses the JSON format for storing all data. This makes your data safer than other programs (Gramps uses “pickled” data which is a security issue, and may not be available to decode for future generations as it has changed over time). gPrime uses modern SQL databases (sqlite, MySQL, and PostgreSQL), although it does not use relational structures.

gPrime is designed so that you can select a subset of any genealogical data based on any criteria. For example, if you want to search common fields, you just enter the information, selected by commas. For example, entering this in the search field:

Smith, Amber

would search common fields for “Smith” and “Amber” and show those that have both. You can also specific which fields to search, like this:

surname=Smith, given=Amber

Finally, you can search for any specific bit of information, if you know how that is specified in the data. For example, imagine that you wanted to find all people who have a father named “Edwin”, then you could enter:

parent_family_list.father_handle.primary_name.first_name=Edwin%

That is a little complicated, but the point is that you do not need to wait for a programmer to add a special filter to search for something, nor do you need a complex set of combinations of filters to select items based on simple values. We’ll try to make this easier, too, over time.

The goal is to make gPrime complete by July 2017, but it is already somewhat usable. See the github software repository for instructions. We’ll cover more details about how to install, test, and help.