Family Historian User Group

Does anyone know where I can edit/change which Mentioned Records can be highlighted and to what granularity, and how to change the colour from a default Blue? I cannot find where the tick box is mentioned in the Help system, hence the query.
With an unticked Highlight Mentioned Records this is what I see. However, when I do tick the box, some of the mentioned records are highlighted and others are not. In Joseph's main section, his parents are not highlighted and his wives are mentioned in bold, but not highlighted in the blue, but further down Eliza is in blue, and her parents are not highlighted. In the children of the marriage section (not shown here), the children are all highlighted in the blue.
Is it possible that we the users can change the colour from the blue, and specify whether parents can be highlighted?

Sorry, I have no idea. That is a new feature in FH V7 but the Help page is silent on this feature.
I suggest a support request to Calico Pie both asking for advice and reporting the missing Help page details.

Thanks, Mike. I have logged a support call.

The response from CP Support is :
"Mentioned records" are in fact record links. The Records Window and the Book Window does not support record links, but report designers can implement references to records as record links, and if you use one of these reports when generating a website, the record links may function as such if there is something appropriate for them to link to which there may or may not be. The "Highlight Mentioned Records" option allows the viewer to see which records have been implemented as links. You cannot currently change the colour.

The only way you can control which records get highlighted is by designing your own report using a report-type plugin. This can be done, but it's not a small job.

So now we know! Another undocumented feature discovered.

That does not make any sense to me. So I don't know!
"Mentioned records" are in fact record links.
The "Highlight Mentioned Records" option allows the viewer to see which records have been implemented as links.
We are discussing absolutely standard Reports and the Option applies to all the Reports I have tried.
The blue highlighted records are NOT implemented as links in any sense that I understand, i.e. clicking them does nothing.

Why are some names highlighted and not others? There seems to be no explanation.

Paul, did you report the lack of Help page details?

Mike,

if you use one of these reports when generating a website, the record links may function as such [links] if there is something appropriate for them to link to which there may or may not be. The "Highlight Mentioned Records" option allows the viewer to see which records have been implemented as links.

So, they only function as links in a website, but are marked in a report so you can see (when viewing the report) which will be links when you generate the website.

In reports designed by CP, there are obviously some defaults implemented. If you design your own report, you can make any record you like a link.

You may be correct, and reading between the lines that may be what is meant, but that is not what it says.
How do you interpret the very first statement "Mentioned records" are in fact record links?
In fact, they are not. They may or may not be potential record links in a webpage derived from the Report.

It would have helped if the Help page said something about the option.

How do you interpret the very first statement "Mentioned records" are in fact record links?

I interpret that to mean that 'mentioned records' are record names which will turn into links when FH generates a website.

Personally, I find the statement from CP clear, but obviously my brain works differently to yours.

Well, to me after all the discussions above, that Highlight Mentioned Records is a misnomer and as useful as a chocolate teapot!

We, the users, cannot change who or what gets added as a 'Mentioned Record', nor the colour of the output from Blue. If you do use the Narrative Report in a dvd or web generation, we still cannot change who or what gets added to the 'Mentioned Records' or change the link colour from a 'sort of non grey' without delving into the realms of finding the relevant css file and patching that!

If one saves the Narrative report as a pdf or even a webpage, those 'Mentioned record' links still do not function as links, which leads me to believe that the web site generation actually uses different code in the Narrative report section, and if that assumption is right, then we are not comparing apples with apples!

Paul, are you intending to feedback those thoughts to CP along with reporting the lack of any Help page details?

paultt wrote: ↑

30 Mar 2021 10:00

Well, to me after all the discussions above, that Highlight Mentioned Records is a misnomer and as useful as a chocolate teapot!

We, the users, cannot change who or what gets added as a 'Mentioned Record'

I think we sometimes lose sight of the fact that not all features are meant to be useful to everyone.

I suspect the facility has been added as part of providing for people writing report plugins -- a small audience admittedly, but I shall find it very useful for debugging a report plugin that is intended to generate a custom report for use when generating a website.

Ordinary users who find them 'a chocolate teapot' can untick the option to display them and go on their merry way without ever having to think about them again. Unless of course they generate a website, in which case they get some default links free gratis and for nothing. Of course, they also got the same links in FH6, but without an option to see which they would be when viewing the report.

tatewise wrote: ↑

30 Mar 2021 10:24

Paul, are you intending to feedback those thoughts to CP along with reporting the lack of any Help page details?

As there doesn't seem to be a bug involved (other than the Help file) but rather a design decision, any feedback should be via the Wish List (as a request for a change in the way they work).

Mike, yes and done!

paultt wrote: ↑

26 Mar 2021 18:26

In Joseph's main section, his parents are not highlighted and his wives are mentioned in bold, but not highlighted in the blue, but further down Eliza is in blue, and her parents are not highlighted. In the children of the marriage section (not shown here), the children are all highlighted in the blue.
Is it possible that we the users can change the colour from the blue, and specify whether parents can be highlighted?

Picking up on this from your original query, were the pages for the parents in the report in question? If there weren't then of course there wouldn't be any potential links.

But if a series of pages were produced for a website then those reports would exist and the parent names would be active links.
My interpretation of what Paul says is that even the highlighted individuals do not become active links in PDF or HTML files, so what are the highlights for?

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

30 Mar 2021 10:36

Picking up on this from your original query, were the pages for the parents in the report in question? If there weren't then of course there wouldn't be any potential links.

At the time that I reported this here in the Forum and to support, 'Mentioned Records' did NOT mean a hyperlink, as you cannot click a printed page to jump to somewhere else - I know that. As ticking the box seemed to highlight some names but not all, I wondered how we could determine what got highlighted in the report in the first place. It 'could' have been a nice feature to highlight the individuals in a report.
Pity there was/is no Help to explain what this was all about - if there was, then this discussion would never have arisen in the first place!

Re writing a report from the 'new' report plugin, I looked at the help there and got completely lost in what was going on. My bet is that less than 1 in 1000 of the user base will write a report via the plugin mechanism. I know how difficult it is to create pdf reports and table layouts programmatically for websites through past experience.

tatewise wrote: ↑

30 Mar 2021 10:52

But if a series of pages were produced for a website then those reports would exist and the parent names would be active links.

Not necessarily -- it would depend which individuals were included/which options were selected.

My interpretation of what Paul says is that even the highlighted individuals do not become active links in PDF or HTML files, so what are the highlights for?

The highlighted individuals do become active links in website HTML files, if there is an appropriate page for them to link to.

paultt wrote: ↑

30 Mar 2021 11:00

Re writing a report from the 'new' report plugin, I looked at the help there and got completely lost in what was going on. My bet is that less than 1 in 1000 of the user base will write a report via the plugin mechanism. I know how difficult it is to create pdf reports and table layouts programmatically for websites through past experience.

I did say it would be a very small number of people who would do this... Although a number of the new reports in FH7 are actually generated in Lua, so there are some examples to work from.

colevallygirl, you must be working on a different version of FH than I am. I'm on 7.0.3

If I select Publish -> Narrative reports -> Descendants by Generation, select C W S Munro as the head person, then click OK, I get a report.
Now I click Save Report As and select pdf file - no links.
Save Report As Web page(HTML) - no links
Save Report As .rtf - no links.
etc.

Your example MUST have come from generating a CD/DVD Webpage version which is not a report.
ie using different code!

As CP's response specifically referred to generating a website to see the links, that's what I did.

They did not mention saving the report as PDF, HTML, RTF. Only to generating a website. (I've modified the relevant post to make it clear what the screenshot is showing).

and my initial query on here and to CP Support did not have any mention of a website or hyperlinks, just Mentioned Records coming from the Publish Narrative Report!
No wonder we get so confused!

Re the Help, it's not the obvious place to look for it but 'mentioned records' in the context of generating a website are introduced here:

Website and CD/DVD Wizard - Step 2

Select all the Individuals who you wish to feature in your website or CD/DVD. If you elected to omit all references to ‘Private’ individuals,these will be automatically filtered out, even if you clicked on Add All, or selected them using Select… You will always be warned if Individuals are filtered out in this way.

Each person selected will get their own page - either a page for them alone or a page shared with a spouse, depending on your choices in Step3.

If you do not select a person at this stage it does not follow that they will not be mentioned in the website or Family Tree CD/DVD. It just means that they won’t get their own page. If you wish to be sure that a person is not mentioned at all, you should set that person’s ‘Private’ record flag and tick the privacy flag option in step 1.

paultt wrote: ↑

30 Mar 2021 11:30

and my initial query on here and to CP Support did not have any mention of a website or hyperlinks, just Mentioned Records coming from the Publish Narrative Report!

Better Help would help, certainly -- e.g. just saying that Mentioned Records are records that will be mentioned when generating a website from a report, and they will potentially turn into links in the website if the target for the link is available in that website.