Family Historian User Group

Hi

I have been having a play with the ‘Book’ function within Family Historian to see what a typical booklet could look like.
I have successfully compiled a book containing the following:

• • Title page
  • Contents
  • Family Group Sheet
  • Individual Narrative Report
  • Index

So far so good, then I thought I would invoke within the Items to Index…..People, Places and Attributes to see how they appeared.
Upon consulting the generated index I found that in a number of cases the page on where Places where supposed to be found within the Narrative Report content were not correct and in reality appear on a page later than indicated.
On closer inspection it seems that the only Places which were correct were those which appeared on the self-same page as the start section associated with that particular individual. Should the Place be on a further successive page, then the index does not seem to recognise this and still refers to the individual’s section start page.
i.e. a main section within the narrative Report dealing with an Aunt of mine commences towards the foot of page 9 with a unique Place (Road in this instance) appearing on page 10……however, the report stipulates that this particular Road/Place appears on page 9. This occurs in a number of other instances relating to Places.

I have tried rebuilding the report and also removing proceeding sections and generating another book and whilst pages may get re-numbered as a result the problem remains.

The same issue appears with a number of the Occupations listed (Attributes), presumably for similar reasons mentioned above.

Can’t think of anything that I have done which would cause this issue and can only surmise that it is something to do with the logic/algorithm that FH uses to generate the Index.

Has anyone else discovered this, replicate my findings or throw light on any other areas to look at?

Best Regards

Shiriki

Shiriki,
Sorry I don't know the answer to your question, but it struck me that maybe the index is pointing you to the 'Person' using that place, and not the place itself. If this is the case, then what you are seeing is correct. i.e. it was telling you it was your Aunt that used the place from the index.

To me this makes sense. If the address was on page 9 of your Aunt's entry, it wouldn't help you to identify whose entry you were looking at unless you scrolled back 9 pages to find the start of the entry. This way, you immediately know who was using that address!

Do the same problems occur if you produce the Narrative Report on its own with an Index?

Or do they only affect Books including such reports?

All I can suggest is you report the problems to Calico Pie.

Hi Again

Have looked at at the same Narrative Report as a stand alone report with the relevant options enabled so as to generate an index with Places, Occupations, to appear on a separate page at the end.
It appears to suffer the same issues as when included in a Book as described previously.

Consider the following:

I believe that should a Place (for example) appear on say page 8 in someone's section that also commences on page 8 all fine and dandy, but if a second individual also starts at the foot of page 8 and the same Place features within that persons section on later pages then I guess that as the Index would only refer to the Place occurring on page 8 then one is likely to miss the second entry against this next individual further in the report.....

Don't know if I have explained my logic clearly here or not.....I will have to look at further Narrative Reports to see if this is the case......

To my way of thinking the index should indicate on what page the entries/s occur not perhaps the Individual it may be associated with to avoid the possibility of the above irrespective of whether it is a Place, Occupation (Attribute) etc.

Regards

Shiriki

Theoretically, the Index should list all the pages, or pages ranges, where the item occurs.

The Family Historian Sample Project has a sample Book called The Munros in the 20th Century.
In its Index there are entries such as Bristol 2-4, 6-7, 15 for pages 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 15.

However, after a little experimentation it seems you are correct that the page number in the Index is that of the heading of the Individual section that contains the Place item, etc, and thus the item could actually appear several pages later.

I am not sure whether that is deliberate, or an oversight.
The Help pages do not give any clues, although it is a little unusual compared to normal Index assumptions.
Maybe Calico Pie did not expect narrative sections for any one person to be very long.

You need to ask them.

Hi

Have raised a ticket with Calico Pie regarding the above, including a reference to this thread.

I will await their response and report back in due course.

I will be away for a number of days, so will be unable to post any feedback I may receive until the latter part of the forthcoming week at the earliest.

Regards

Shiriki

Hi

Have received a reply from Calico Pie Support requesting that I submit one of my Narrative Reports along with a list of examples of where within the report the index page number of a Place/Occupation is at variance to the page on which they actually appear.
Have done this and apparently this will be forwarded on to the developers for review......

Will post back here any feedback.

Regard

Shiriki

Hi

I thought I might resurrect this thread as I am thinking of upgrading to version 7.
I am currently still using version 6, but was wondering if the report index in version 7 still compiled entries the same way as I discovered back in 2017 for version 6.
I did not receive any feedback from Calico Pie after submitting reports exhibiting my results and hence I am none the wiser if the compilation of the index was in error or whether the page numbers in the index only gave a reference to the section the entry appeared.
Can anyone advise as to what the index performs in version 7?

Cheers

Shiriki

I quick check suggests FH v7 now lists the page or pages in which each Place name and Attribute (such as Occupation) actually occurs and not just the section.

So it looks like the problem is fixed.

That sounds like excellent news.

Thanks for the prompt response.

Shiriki