Family Historian User Group

For the Poor Law facts, you need to think whether or not they must have a value. If they must, then set them up as custom attributes, otherwise, set them as custom events. But there are very occasional exceptions - see the 2nd example below! If we take a fact of 'Named as father' then because we alw...

Thanks Jane. Like you, I split my sources down to a low level and put little in the citation - even so, I have numerous facts with several citations, the classic case being a birth where I try to cite each source carrying someone's age, so might have a registration index, baptism, several censuses, ...

The trouble is that if we have several Sources being cited against a fact, wouldn't we have to have a set of columns in the query for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc, etc citation? Or am I missing something in dealing with these beasties?

The only thing I'd add to the above is that I actually have 2 sets of folders, one for the stuff that has been recorded in FH, the other for what hasn't been put in yet. That way I can see what I still need to do. (I'm prone to capturing census images off Ancestry for someone and their family in one...

To reinforce the 2 previous replies: I'm guessing that where livery companies / guilds / etc held sway, then usage of the title 'Master XXX' might be controlled. But outside these areas, then the term simply means to say that they were an employer or worked for themselves, rather than an employee. M...

1. Menu item - Tools / Work with Record Identifiers This will shuffle everything down to fill in the gaps - BUT everything after the gap will be renumbered. By searching the Help for 'renumber' I found this bit: 'Family Historian never reuses record ids for deleted records when creating new ones. Th...

capnkeith said: I am surprised that the Ipad has not been discussed .... I am tempted to get one just for note taking at research libraries etc, they look much more convenient than a laptop. I would ask yourself very carefully how long your notes are. The only method of input is a virtual keyboard ...

Ben Sayer said: Adrian Bruce said: 4) It must have the ability to be used in a simple fashion by those who haven't much grasp of Evidence Management, while storing the data in such a way that when they do understand it, they can drill down and expose the assertions / assumptions / whatever that the...

Thanks for that Lineascope link. I think it interesting that (if I understood it correctly) the author was not envisaging it being used for every 'fact' in a 'database', rather as supporting explanations for some major elements. That could help with the workload because there's no doubt that doing E...

It's an interesting series of articles on that blog. I don't know if I'm being pragmatic, realistic or defeatist but I suspect little will come of these ideas for precisely the reason Jon alludes to. All(?) FH programs are based round GEDCOM. This generates a fairly tough series of requirements on a...

I've only just noticed this so no idea how long it's been like it, but it's like this for me on v4.1.2. I'm using 'Segoe UI' 8 pt (which I'd forgotten about - must be a Win7 font, in fact I think that it's designed specifically as a UI font). 'Assessment' is no problem for me but 'Where within Sourc...

1. Personally I usually keep my source titles in 'human-speak' with no references, e.g. 'Census Entry: Bruce, Edith, 1871, Dundee', recording the reference in the note box and the identification within the repository (which has to be added on the 'all' tab for a source, as a sub-item to repository) ...

The census originals for Scotland are held by the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS), so the Kew references do not apply. Because I start with the image from ScotlandsPeople, I've always used their references of which this is an example (format is District, County, GROS Data) PANBRIDE ANGUS...

And if we haven't put you off enough already, then you may note that the draft standard for GEDCOM 5.5.1 (October 1999) 'Removed the option for encoding embedded multimedia objects'. (Actually removed it, not just deprecated it). If I read the standard correctly (always a dangerous claim this time a...

When restoring a GEDCOM file into a Project (and possibly always), one is presented with 2 dialog boxes in succession: 1. 'Select File to Restore' to select the .ZIP file containing the data to be restored; 2. 'Enter Restore File Name' to specify the name of the GEDCOM file _after_ restoration. FH s...

I wanted to record various things about images like references, etc but didn't want to use the filename for reasons like length. It was Jane who pointed me in the direction of using IPTC data, which is data held internal to an image file and naturally visible and updatable only if you've got some so...

For what it's worth, my unscientific gut feeling is that many GEDCOM handling programs deal happily with custom events , but few deal with custom attributes . It may therefore be worth following Peter's suggestion and always sticking to custom events by recasting the form of words to make a sensible...

Chris Bowyer said: My point about it being ambiguous is not that I can't understand it, but that there are at least 2 apparently authoritative but different answers. Unless you know which convention the writer subscribes to, you can't tell what 'twice removed' actually means. Totally agree with you...

Sounds more sensible - provided it says something like 'Chris' grandfather's third cousin'. But I think it ought to be switchable because we'll still get asked - 'Are you my third cousin?' (Nearly as chilling as 'Are you my Mummy?' - with apologies to non-Dr Who devotees) Mind you - just to enter ra...

No - I've tried it as well - I suspect the import on conversion may be a block move, which is why it's not there for odd ones later.

Could you just move them in Windows Explorer? You may need to order them by date and only move the ones after project creation date. And if you move them, rather than copy them, it will identify them in FH by saying they're not there any more and so enable you to remap them in FH.

Jon - rigorous and thought provoking as usual! I think you have hit it with the comment on the removal of the '...' button. If that is reinstated, it would give me fast access to the extended entry window, allowing double-click to go to the Windows standard of selecting the single word. I certainly ...

Re addresses and the way they relate to places. Peter says 'within neither FH (v.4.0.2) nor GEDCOM 5.5 is Address in any sense 'within' Place.' Which surprised me but when I read his reference, he is of course correct. However, the way I have used Address is totally different to this implied method ...

Ouch - no, I wouldn't like that at all. While it's true to say that 'button is available immediately beside the text' when you're in the text already, if you're not then the button is invisible in v4 (reveals a bit more text). Thus, if my focus is outside the window and I want the extended entry to ...

Personally I'd prefer to be able to see a list of names in the Individual Records window where the first name for a person shows a full record and the other names - call them aliases if you like - are clearly distinguished as being aliases. (I did think it would be possible to only show part of the ...