Surnames in capitals and other issues..
Posted: 16 Nov 2002 20:37
Surnames in capitals and other issues...
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:40:24 +0100
Various people have comment on the fact that the Family Historian manual suggests that you don't enter surnames in capitals. I'm afraid that that was just me being opinionated - you should feel completely free to continue to enter surnames in capitals if that is what you want to do. That said, there was a reason for it. In the past (when genealogists worked primarily on paper) it made sense to enter surnames in capitals so that you could easily see what the surname is. But using the GEDCOM standard that you identify the surname using the slash characters - e.g. Simon /Orde/ (which incidentally is a much easier way for a computer to identify a surname) - there is no longer a need to use capitals for the same purpose. If you do use capitals only, you effectively lose a very small amount of information - namely, which letters are standardly written in capitals. For example, it may be obvious to everyone here which 2 letters would normally be capitalised in MCCRACKEN, but people from other countries would not necessarily know. If you do enter data in mixed case, this does not prevent you from displaying the surname in upper case, in diagrams or reports, if you wish to. In fact, F.H. sometimes does this by default.
Brian Teece asks how you sort the Records List. I expect you know that you can sort the Record Window by clicking on column headings? I think that what you want is to be able to specify a sort (a) by name, and (b) within that, by date. I will add this (ie. the ability to specify multi-column sort) to the wish-list.
Neil and Viv Porteus ask 'Any plans for wheel mouse support to scroll through the records window?'. Its on the wish-list.
They also say 'I notice FH reports uncle/aunt relationships as 'great great-uncle/aunt' for example, whilst other packages appear to report the same relationship as 'great grand-uncle'. Version 1.0 of F.H. reported the relationship as great grand-uncle/aunt too, and I changed it to 'great great-uncle/aunt' following user feedback that the latter was better. I will add to the wish-list the requirement for the user to be able to choose which they prefer.
Andrew Jolly asks about linking images to individuals and families. The best source of info on this is Chapter 9 of the User Manual. The key point though is that you do most of your linking by starting from the picture (in the Multimedia Window) and linking from there back to the Individuals (or Famlies or Sources) that are in the picture. You can insert a picture and link it to a single record in one step though, if you want to. But to add links to faces in a picture (which is a very natural way to want to link people to a picture, and the one we recommend), you have to be looking at the picture in the Multimedia Window.
Andrew Jolly also says 'The reports seem to be very powerful, but I cannot seem to find one that just prints out a complete record sheet for each person, or family, or descendants or the whole file!' This has been a much-discussed issue. Family Historian doesn't currently include traditional reports like Individual Summary Report, etc. It is because we accepted that these reports are a serious omission that we decided to make release 2.1 available to 2.0 users as a free download, when released (2.1 will include the missing reports). For more on this, see the 'Reports' section of the 'Features' page of our web-site at http://www.family-historian.co.uk.
Andrew Jolly also days 'In diagrams, I appreciate being able to print out all relatives of any particular person, but is there any way of printing out a chart of all relatives of everyone, i.e. absolutely everyone in the tree?'. No. I'll add it to the Wish-List though. Do other people also want this?
Simon Orde List Administrator and Family Historian designer
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 10:40:24 +0100
Various people have comment on the fact that the Family Historian manual suggests that you don't enter surnames in capitals. I'm afraid that that was just me being opinionated - you should feel completely free to continue to enter surnames in capitals if that is what you want to do. That said, there was a reason for it. In the past (when genealogists worked primarily on paper) it made sense to enter surnames in capitals so that you could easily see what the surname is. But using the GEDCOM standard that you identify the surname using the slash characters - e.g. Simon /Orde/ (which incidentally is a much easier way for a computer to identify a surname) - there is no longer a need to use capitals for the same purpose. If you do use capitals only, you effectively lose a very small amount of information - namely, which letters are standardly written in capitals. For example, it may be obvious to everyone here which 2 letters would normally be capitalised in MCCRACKEN, but people from other countries would not necessarily know. If you do enter data in mixed case, this does not prevent you from displaying the surname in upper case, in diagrams or reports, if you wish to. In fact, F.H. sometimes does this by default.
Brian Teece asks how you sort the Records List. I expect you know that you can sort the Record Window by clicking on column headings? I think that what you want is to be able to specify a sort (a) by name, and (b) within that, by date. I will add this (ie. the ability to specify multi-column sort) to the wish-list.
Neil and Viv Porteus ask 'Any plans for wheel mouse support to scroll through the records window?'. Its on the wish-list.
They also say 'I notice FH reports uncle/aunt relationships as 'great great-uncle/aunt' for example, whilst other packages appear to report the same relationship as 'great grand-uncle'. Version 1.0 of F.H. reported the relationship as great grand-uncle/aunt too, and I changed it to 'great great-uncle/aunt' following user feedback that the latter was better. I will add to the wish-list the requirement for the user to be able to choose which they prefer.
Andrew Jolly asks about linking images to individuals and families. The best source of info on this is Chapter 9 of the User Manual. The key point though is that you do most of your linking by starting from the picture (in the Multimedia Window) and linking from there back to the Individuals (or Famlies or Sources) that are in the picture. You can insert a picture and link it to a single record in one step though, if you want to. But to add links to faces in a picture (which is a very natural way to want to link people to a picture, and the one we recommend), you have to be looking at the picture in the Multimedia Window.
Andrew Jolly also says 'The reports seem to be very powerful, but I cannot seem to find one that just prints out a complete record sheet for each person, or family, or descendants or the whole file!' This has been a much-discussed issue. Family Historian doesn't currently include traditional reports like Individual Summary Report, etc. It is because we accepted that these reports are a serious omission that we decided to make release 2.1 available to 2.0 users as a free download, when released (2.1 will include the missing reports). For more on this, see the 'Reports' section of the 'Features' page of our web-site at http://www.family-historian.co.uk.
Andrew Jolly also days 'In diagrams, I appreciate being able to print out all relatives of any particular person, but is there any way of printing out a chart of all relatives of everyone, i.e. absolutely everyone in the tree?'. No. I'll add it to the Wish-List though. Do other people also want this?
Simon Orde List Administrator and Family Historian designer