* Floundering in a flood of footnotes

[Peter Collier]

For some events, there can be a preponderence of sources. For example, someone's birth date might be evidenced by a birth certificate, and by the ages recorded on their marriage certifcate(s), death certificate, burial record, half a dozen census returns... and so on.

Now, of course, I want to retain all of these sources. However, when it comes to publishing reports one ends up with a string of footnote numbers a mile long and half a page of citations just for one fact. That isn't really good practice, since most of these citations are, in essence, superfluous – especially if one particular source that accords with most/all of the other references might be considered 'definitive' (e.g. a birth certificate).

Is there any way to limit which sources are cited in reports? One idea I had was to mark 'lesser' sources as private, so that they would be hidden in reports. The problem there, of course, is that a minor source for one fact (e.g. a death certificate for a year of birth), is the definitive source for another fact (e.g. the date, place and cause of death recorded on a death certificate).

Does anyone know of a way to square the circle, other than manually editing the reports in a word processor?

[tatewise]

That is an interesting problem Peter.
There does not appear to be any current method for solving it easily.

The only potential solution is to use the Citation Assessment field, which is specific to each Citation, so the same Source record can have a different Assessment for different Facts.

Ideally, the Report Options on the Sources tab could have a setting to exclude any Citations with an Assessment below a nominated level. But that needs to be Wish List Request &/or a message to Calico Pie Support for a future revison of FH.

In the mean time, a Plugin could be written to remove Citations below a nominated level while the Report is produced. Then Edit > Undo Plugin Updates would put all the Citations back. Alternatively, a Copy of the Project would offer a safer method.

[Peter Collier]

That sounds like a great idea. I don't actually use the citation assessment feature myself, so being able to repurpose it to earmark which citations I want to appear in reports would be marvellous.

If I were to bat my eyelids sweetly, would someone with the requisite know-how be willing to write such a plugin when they had the time?

[tatewise]

The Plugin development continues in Exclude citations from reports unless assessed as Primary (13496).