* Ancestral Sources v7.4 Released

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NickWalker
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Ancestral Sources v7.4 Released

Post by NickWalker »

Ancestral Source v7.4, released on 21st May 2022, includes some additional features to help with census auto-text and bug fixes. It continues to support Family Historian 7, Family Historian 6 and earlier versions.

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Ancestral Sources will generate rich text source transcriptions allowing your source text to include tables, coloured text, fonts, etc. In addition it supports the new Family Historian 7 source templates, including the essentials and advanced collections. Ancestral Sources continues to support projects created in Family Historian 6 and earlier and includes additional features and improvements that will benefit users who don't upgrade to FH7 immediately.

What is Ancestral Sources?

Ancestral Sources is a very popular utility, created by Nick Walker, designed to be used in conjunction with Family Historian to allow faster, more convenient creation of Census, Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death and Burial/Cremation records. Ancestral Sources makes adding source entries to Family Historian much quicker and easier to achieve. Simply enter the record details and allow Ancestral Sources to do all the hard work of creating Census, Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death, Burial, Occupation linked via citations to sources and multimedia records.

Ancestral Sources pioneered a source-driven approach to entering data into Family Historian. Most of the information that is added to a family history file originates from one of just a few types of documents, namely birth, marriage and death certificates, church baptisms, marriages and burials, and census records. The concept of Ancestral Sources is that it allows the data from these source documents to be entered directly into the software, building up the family history data in a more intuitive approach than the usual methods used by genealogy applications. For example, typically entering a census household entry in a family history application requires multiple facts such as census, occupation, birth, etc. to be created for each individual, all linked back to a source via citations: a very time consuming exercise. Ancestral Sources makes this far easier and much quicker to achieve.

Ancestral Sources is highly recommended for all users of FH. The availability of Ancestral Sources is frequently cited as a key reason to use Family Historian over other genealogy applications that do not have similar functionality.

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What's New in Ancestral Sources v7.4
  • There are now options to specify whether census columns with no data entered are included in the source text produced by Autotext. This can be set on a field-by-field basis in census templates or via a global option.
  • There is now a new toolbar button and corresponding menu item to add an empty row to the census grid. This is to make it easier to enter details of people who don't appear to be related to the family and don't need to be added as individual records, e.g. lodgers. Those individuals can simply be entered directly into the grid to appear in the source text generated by Auto-text, but will not included as individual records in the family history file.
  • The CustomID auto-text tag wasn't working for census sources. This was reported by Peter Rollin and is now fixed.
  • An issue crept into the 7.3.5 release which stopped multiple images being added without closing and re-opening the image window. This is fixed.
  • Also fixed a recent issue that had appeared where the Keyword and Function buttons were not visible on the Auto Text Template Screen.
  • Also fixed a display issue with the source/image template control on the options screen.
  • Tool tips that appear when the mouse pointer hovers above various options will now remain on screen for longer to make them easier to read. This was requested by ChrisV on the FHUG forums.
  • Made various improvements to the way that Ancestral Sources displays information on computers running at scaling other than 100%.
  • Made a change to the installer that should allow AS to be installed on Windows running on Arm processors.
  • If you've manually edited the census source text generated by auto-text then you will no longer be warned that the 'Fit' button hasn't been clicked (if you have this option selected). Thanks to David2416 on the FHUG forum for pointing out this unnecessary warning.
  • Fixed an issue reported by David2416 on the FHUG forums where the dialog reporting a change to the source title could be asked multiple times.
  • AS would crash if source text containing an individual list was copied into the source note and the link clicked on. I fixed this.
  • An FHUG user Kenfig (Mike) reported an issue with colours changing if the last column was deleted. I think this has now been fixed.
  • Fixed an issue reported by Andrew Braid, Richard Hyland and others where the thumbnail version of a linked image displays very faintly so that it can be very difficult or impossible to see. Thanks in particular to Richard and Andrew for helping me to track down the cause of this problem.
You can see a list of all the features in this and earlier versions of Ancestral Sources on the Knowledge Base Version History page.

Download

Visit the Ancestral Sources v7.4 Download page on the Knowledge Base site. Most users are likely to have a 64 bit version of Windows so if in doubt try installing the 64 bit version of Ancestral Sources unless you're sure you have a 32 bit operating system.

See also the Ancestral Sources Help Online and the Ancestral Sources Knowledge Base pages.

Thank you to Simon Orde at Calico Pie for all his support and encouragement in producing Ancestral Sources, Jane and Helen at the FHUG for all their technical expertise in getting the AS download, help and knowledge base online and everyone who has helped to test, report issues and make suggestions for improvements.
Nick Walker
Ancestral Sources Developer

https://fhug.org.uk/kb/kb-article/ancestral-sources/
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