Family Historian User Group

Morning everyone
Hope you are all well. I am now trying to focus on my French side of my family (loving how all the records are online. not loving how there are no searchable index, but such is life!)
Most of the civil and parish records have the same text with a few tweaks and as much as I'm loving practicing my french whilst deciphering the writing, I was hoping to speed things up a little. I had been using One Note to copy and paste bits though I'm finding FH much easier for all the accents. I have just upgraded to FH 7 and quite enjoying the way the sources are working although I think it will take me a little time to get used to it.
So, what I would like to know is I think to do with Autotext but there might be an alternative. I was hoping there would be a way for me to have an autotext which will have the full text with the gaps for names, places, dates etc and then when I am done, I can tweak the text where the record has differences. I have the latest version of AS and it would be great to use that which looks possible, but I'm not certain how to combine fields with the text.
All help would be fab!

Take a look at Autohotkey.
It takes an input file, which contains simple text instructions for autohotkey, telling it what text to enter when a hotkey is pressed.
e.g. Among my many instructions, I have programmed it to type 2/4/1911 whenever I press <Ctrl> 1, which saves me entering the 1911 census date each time it is needed, saving me typing as well as having to remember all the census dates
It would be ideal for you, as you can write any text, including foreign accents into the instruction file to replace your <Ctrl> key combination.

Gowermick wrote: ↑

19 Dec 2020 22:49

Take a look at Autohotkey.
It takes an input file, which contains simple text instructions for autohotkey, telling it what text to enter when a hotkey is pressed.
e.g. Among my many instructions, I have programmed it to type 2/4/1911 whenever I press <Ctrl> 1, which saves me entering the 1911 census date each time it is needed, saving me typing as well as having to remember all the census dates
It would be ideal for you, as you can write any text, including foreign accents into the instruction file to replace your <Ctrl> key combination.

Thanks i will have a look at that too. I do want to transcribe the full entry which is a good half a page long. Probably not necessary though.

Sorry, but I misread your original post, thinking you just wanted an easy way to fill in the gaps between standard phrases with accented words.
Nevertheless, you could programme Autohotkey to insert your standard phrases, leaving you to fill in the blanks in between. So it may still be useful.
I do a similar thing when entering GRO births, where I add a standard note GRO states mothers maiden name is followed by me typing the MMN, into a note for each individual, simply by pressing <Ctrl> =
The possibilities are endless

If you are using AS you can create your own Autotext.
Just copy the standard autotext that is closest to what you want, then give the new version a meaningful name.
Modify the bits that are different and save
Have a look at the KB, I think there are quite a few on there.
I have created my own baptism one for Roman Catholic Baptisms (In Latin)

Great I will try AS. I tried using the autotext in FH and it kind of worked okay, but there was a lot of text to go through and replace, AS, but automate it a little. Fingers crossed

Have you had a look at ORA, Online Repository Assistant (https://www.ora-extension.com/en/contents.htm) ?
I have been using if for over 6 months now on v6 and now v7 and has saved me hours of transcribing records off genealogy websites. Not free but at $24 pa well worth it in my opinion.
Effectively it is a browser extension which reads all the info from the table in the webpage you are looking at, and shows them in a 'control panel'. You can then use its cut'n'paste for each field, directly into your FH template, or script it to do that automatically with its relatively simple scripting language. If you are using 'generic' source and templating, you can build your 'text from source' and 'notes' within the script for that catalogue, so when you reuse the scripts, the output format is the same. Another feature I like is that it has a checkbox where you can tick that you have done that record, declare it not relevant, or revisit it later.
Visit the link above and go through some of the video demos.

I use AS for capture of BBMDB and Census data, and have modified a number of its AutoText templates. Certainly auto capture in to the text of things like Mothers Maiden Name (GRO / Births), full details from the Census, etc are very easily handled and flow through in to FH and then, via the Export plugin to GedSite for my website.

Thanks everyone. I have used AS for all my British records and think it is amazing. I've managed to get halfway through creating a birth register template which looks great
Only downside I can see so far is the language and format side of things. So for example it starts off with
"L'an mil huit cent vingt"
And my autotext is now saying "L'an 1820". Is there a way to make the date in words and in French? I did wonder about the language pack but I don't want everything in French.
And can I add the parents ages to the entry form?
Sorry for all the questions, I'm quite excited by the possibilities.

paultt wrote: ↑

20 Dec 2020 10:47

Have you had a look at ORA, Online Repository Assistant (https://www.ora-extension.com/en/contents.htm) ?
I have been using if for over 6 months now on v6 and now v7 and has saved me hours of transcribing records off genealogy websites. Not free but at $24 pa well worth it in my opinion.
Effectively it is a browser extension which reads all the info from the table in the webpage you are looking at, and shows them in a 'control panel'. You can then use its cut'n'paste for each field, directly into your FH template, or script it to do that automatically with its relatively simple scripting language. If you are using 'generic' source and templating, you can build your 'text from source' and 'notes' within the script for that catalogue, so when you reuse the scripts, the output format is the same. Another feature I like is that it has a checkbox where you can tick that you have done that record, declare it not relevant, or revisit it later.
Visit the link above and go through some of the video demos.

That certainly looks interesting but I don't think it will help this situation. All the records are not transcribed and are just scanned images of the parish and civil records. Some have been added to Family Search but they are a pain to find in there. I will keep I'm mind for other sites though.

I suggest you start a new topic in the Ancestral Sources forum about this. Nick will be able to tell you what is, or is not, possible to achieve with a customised template.

LornaCraig wrote: ↑

20 Dec 2020 13:18

I suggest you start a new topic in the Ancestral Sources forum about this. Nick will be able to tell you what is, or is not, possible to achieve with a customised template.

Great idea. I will finish the record I am doing so I know what tweaks I need. I probably should go to work first though!

I would like some more information on this. Please.

Is there an auto hot key facility in fh 7? Or does this apply only to AS?
I have searched fh 7 help and not found it.
I dont use AS but I work a good deal on censuses from 1939.
To differentiate the German 1939 census from the UK 1939 Register, I have typed in the full date many hundreds of times.
I have wondered whether it is possible to create a custom event for a particular census and to have the date field already populated?

AutoHotkey is explained in the Knowledge Base: AutoHotkey

The autohotkey I was referring to is a standalone utility, details can be found here:
https://www.autohotkey.com/

I have created an instruction file that enters full date for the different censuses. Like you I was getting fed up trying to remember the dates.
This file is run at startup, so the shortcut are available in any program, but I don't use then for anything other than FH'

In my control file, <Ctrl> 4 enters 7 Jun 1841, <Ctrl> 5 enters 30 Mar 1851 etc, so they are easy to remember.
It also treats the topmost row of Number keys differently from the Righthand Keypad Number keys, so you could use one for English Census date, and one for German dates.
If you need any help creating the Instruction file, do let me know, but once you get the hang of it, it is quite simple to create in Notepad.