Family Historian User Group

TL;DR version - I don't think I'm going to use Templated Records in their current state - not because of their output, but because of the different methods that I would need to employ in general use of FH. (I reserve the right to experiment!)

More detail:
For what it's worth, a few comments on a very thin, personal experience of some templated sources, taken from the Essentials collection. These are the things that I would need to delve further into if using Templated Souces. Any comments explaining what I've missed, gratefully accepted.

1. No surprise that I might not agree with some of the Templated formats. E.g. the "Book / Pamphlet / Monograph" template (Essentials collection, as I said) doesn't work very well if you don't have an Author, because then the printed Footnote and Bibliography start with the publication date. If I used it, I'd need to move things around. But hey, remember that they did the work and I didn't.

2. Not using the Author (say) in the standard GEDCOM fields leads to issues with filtering and queries. I'm sure that I used to be able to filter on Author in the Sources Tab in v6, but it's not there now. How often did I filter on Author? (Assuming that I could...) A few times, usually to try to find similar sources to clone. (This lack of Author filtering now, of course applies to all v7 Sources usage, not just Templated ones.)

So if I can't filter on Author, I need to have it visible in the Records Window / Sources Tab or run a Query on it.

Unfortunately, it's the same answer either way - If it's a Templated item (as Author is by default), it's really difficult to access it and there are multiple possible answers for which column it goes in, I believe. In a query, it took me a while to find the appropriate columns for Templated items - I had to look for the definitions and the field values in the query output. So, it's next to impossible to show Templated Authors in a general-purpose query or in the Sources tab (it's the same issue: which column occurence number is it?)

So far as I can see, I can customise the Property Box for Templated Sources to put the old GEDCOM Author back in the Property Box, outside the Templated items; remove the Templated Author; and then I *think* I can get the various output formats to use that old GEDCOM item. Is it worth it? (What about Ancestral Sources if I were to move Author back to the old GEDCOM item? Is that an issue? I don't know because I don't actually use it)

3. One of the peculiar bits of the way that FH stores its templated source data, is the way it uses the two Title items in the GEDCOM Source record. As all those who read the GEDCOM spec'n will know(!) there is a Title and a Short Title for Sources. The way that I use them is that the Title contains the name of the source in the real world. OTOH, the Short Title contains the name of the Source RECORD in the system. Thus Title might read "History of the Cheshire Home Guard: From LDV Formation to Stand-Down 1940-1944" - taken from the front page of the book. The Short Title is a compound item such as "Book: History of the Cheshire Home Guard, NMP reprint". Notice that I prefix my Short Titles with a type to ensure that my Source Records collate together in some useful fashion - others might prefix differently with a surname, e.g., or even not at all.

In Templated Sources, the default set up is that the (GEDCOM) Title is a compound item and the (GEDCOM) Short Title is omitted. Putting the compound item in Title, not Short Title, cuts across my usage. This means that Templated Sources look different in the Sources Record tab from the Generic Sources because they create the Title differently from the way I do my Short Title.

It may also matter when it comes to exporting - I have yet to get my head round how the various export routines handle Title and Short Title but did I see mention in the Export plug-in of a possibility of swapping Title and Short Title on export?

These are just my thoughts thrown open for comments and written down as a prompt to myself.

I think this illustrates that it is not in general a good idea to mix generic and templated sources of overlapping scope in the same project. They are different animals, and getting consistent output and queries that cover both is virtually impossible.

Therefore, the upgrader has a choice to make. Stick with your current way of working (“if it ain’t broke...”), or gradually redo all your existing sources to replace them with templated versions.

No right or wrong answer - some people love the granularity and structure that templates can give. Others will judge it’s not worth the effort of reworking. My own sourcing style errs towards less rather than more so I’m in the latter camp, but other approaches are just as valid.

[Note: my tongue is in my cheek for some of this...]

1. But you always have an Author, Adrian -- it's that prolific person U.N.Known! (more seriously, Unknown, which can be a useful piece of information to record).

2. Mark is right -- mixing Generic and Templated sources increases the difficulty of querying/filtering. And you are right -- v6 supported filtering by Author and V7 doesn't (the space in the UI has been reallocated to filtering by Template).

2a. I could swear Tatewise worked out how to add a column for a named template field but my googlefu has deserted me. (I also vaguely remember that I couldn't make it work). He'll be along soon, I expect.

2c. Instinctively I would shy away from adding generic fields to a templated source, but I don't have a concrete reason: just, this way lies tears.

3. You could customise the autogenerated Title to work as you wish, or turn off autogeneration and do it manually (I'd suggest customising it myself -- use the time-savers that you can). I used Title for the full citation and Short Title as a 'finding aid' in the old world; when I get around to migrating my real data to V7, I'll use the Title as a finding aid as I've now got a bibliography to contain 'the name of the source in the real world' and the footnote for the citation; however, I haven't found a way to show either of those in the Source Records Window. You could do something creative with Custom ID, but that's a lot of rework.

2. Mixing generic and templated fields is frowned upon.

2a. The way to access metafields is explained in Understanding Data References under Data References and Metafields near the bottom. e.g. Author shortcut is %SOUR.~TX-AUTHOR% and Location is %SOUR.~PL-LOCATION%
That should work everywhere in expressions including Queries and Records Window columns.
e.g. In a Fact Query use %FACT.SOUR>~TX-AUTHOR%

2b. It is possible to use the generic Author %SOUR.AUTH% field in place of a templated Author Metafield everywhere.
That includes the template Format expressions as well as Queries, Records Window columns, etc.

3. I have not found a way to display Footnote or Bibliography text in the Records Window or anywhere else except the Citation window and Reports.

4. The Export Gedcom File Extra Options Tab explains under Templated Source Options how the export options work.

tatewise wrote: ↑

28 May 2021 15:06

2. Mixing generic and templated fields is frowned upon.

So in effect, only suitable for new users of FH!
I have over 20k individuals in my tree, and must have over 50k generic sources, and the thought of having to convert them all to templated sources makes it a non-starter. Makes one wonder what CP were thinking when they introduced templated sources.

They give another option, which isn’t compulsory to use if you are happy with generic sources. It was probably also a commercial imperative, as their major competitors have had them for years. In RootsMagic, all sources are templated, and while FTM has them buried a little deeper in the menus (in my 2012 version, anyway), they are there as an option. All three products promote their templates as based on the work of Elizabeth Shown Mills.

Mark1834 wrote: ↑

28 May 2021 16:45

All three products promote their templates as based on the work of Elizabeth Shown Mills.

Not entirely true for FH -- they have a set of templates based on work at Strathclyde University, and another based on ESM.

Gowermick wrote: ↑

28 May 2021 16:23

Makes one wonder what CP were thinking when they introduced templated sources.

They weren't thinking of you, because you're happy with what you've got and can continue to use it with some changes; they were thinking of making life easier for new users/attracting users migrating from other products that already have templates (which is a lot of users).

Thanks for your comments folks...

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

28 May 2021 14:04

... 1. But you always have an Author, Adrian -- it's that prolific person U.N.Known! (more seriously, Unknown, which can be a useful piece of information to record).

Actually, yes - sort of. A positive indication of "Unknown" can indeed be important information - it shows that you haven't simply forgotten. However, misuse of the name field can cause problems. I haven't yet seen someone claim that their earliest German ancestors are Herr and Frau Unbekannt, but give it time... And certainly FamilySearch FamilyTree is apparently full of Hungarian or Scandinavian people whose name translates to things like "Illegitimate" or "Still born"....

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

28 May 2021 14:04

2. ... Mark is right -- mixing Generic and Templated sources increases the difficulty of querying/filtering. And you are right -- v6 supported filtering by Author and V7 doesn't (the space in the UI has been reallocated to filtering by Template). ...

Ah - I wasn't wrong then...

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

28 May 2021 14:04

3. You could customise the autogenerated Title to work as you wish, ...

I did customise the autogenerated Title by adding a new templated item corresponding to the prefix that I apply to the Short Title - that seemed to work well but then I get worried about what comes out of any export then.

tatewise wrote: ↑

28 May 2021 15:06

... 2a. The way to access metafields is explained in Understanding Data References under Data References and Metafields near the bottom. e.g. Author shortcut is %SOUR.~TX-AUTHOR% and Location is %SOUR.~PL-LOCATION%
That should work everywhere in expressions including Queries and Records Window columns.
e.g. In a Fact Query use %FACT.SOUR>~TX-AUTHOR%

Wow... That link looks like a "three-pipe problem"... But thanks.

Why such a difficult problem? Most of what is documented in that link is identical to FH v6. Only metafields are new.

The shortcut data reference for a metafield is composed from its field type and its field name.
In the template definition, its type is one of the seven options such as Text or Place, giving the prefix TX- or PL- as per table.
If the field name is Author then the suffix is the uppercase equivalent AUTHOR.
Shortcuts always start with a tilde ~ such as ~SPOU or ~CHIL so the metafield shortcut is ~TX-AUTHOR

In any exported GEDCOM the Title and Short Title get exported unaltered because they are generic fields.
Also, any Repository link is usually exported as a generic link when using the Export Gedcom File plugin.
The metafields are usually exported as the Note text.

tatewise wrote: ↑

28 May 2021 15:06

...
4. The Export Gedcom File Extra Options Tab explains under Templated Source Options how the export options work.

Thanks Mike.
At the risk of looking the authorial gift horse in the mouth, now I've seen it, and tried it - it illustrates my fear.

"Source generic Title is moved to the generic Short Title" - seems fine.

"Footnote plain text becomes the generic Title" - is a decent fallback. However, if I wanted to export a template-sourced GEDCOM back into standard (generic) GEDCOM, I'd really like the template {Title} to go into the generic GEDCOM Title; the template {Author} to go into the generic Author, etc, etc.

Now, of course that's easy to say because I'm looking at a templated source where all those options exist. All it needs is someone who's created a template with a new item {Editor} (say) who wants that to go into generic Author. Indeed, the generic Publication item is probably ideally some sort of concatenation of template {Publication_Date} and {Publisher}. Not to mention the {Publication_Place} that isn't defined in the Essentials template but I might have added in...

Oh dear - it doesn't really work, does it, if you want the full-fat, fully-detailed GEDCOM on export?

Hmm. Calico Pie have designed it so that the generic Title is effectively a read-only item whose format is defied in the Source Template. Maybe the way forward to cope with this sort of export would be to similarly define a read-only generic Author as {Author} (which could be updated by the user to concatenate {Author} and {Editor} say); a read-only generic Publication as a concatenation of {Publication_Date} and {Publisher}, etc... Not sure how many items would be needed... Given that they would only be needed at export, could they be dynamically generated to a format help in the Source Template? And it's all just to cover exporting from a file with templated sources to a "proper" fully-detailed GEDCOM. How often, in all honesty, is that needed?

Your last sentence is the conclusion that almost everyone comes to.
We have got used to exporting all those generic Source fields but many other products do not support them all and what purpose do they serve anyway? They are really only significant in our FH master Project.

There are too many variants of metafields that can be customised by users to map them to generic fields.
For products that support Source templates (like RootsMagic) the metafields may be mapped to their format, but why bother?
Some products (like GedSite) understand FH metafields that can be retained intact.

The templated Source record Title can be the formatted Title, or the formatted Footnote, or handcrafted text.
That should be enough for most exports.

tatewise wrote: ↑

28 May 2021 21:15

... We have got used to exporting all those generic Source fields but many other products do not support them all and what purpose do they serve anyway? They are really only significant in our FH master Project. ...

Indeed. In reality the last time that I exported a GEDCOM was to set up my Ancestry file. And that's a while ago...

AdrianBruce wrote: ↑

28 May 2021 21:49

tatewise wrote: ↑

28 May 2021 21:15

... We have got used to exporting all those generic Source fields but many other products do not support them all and what purpose do they serve anyway? They are really only significant in our FH master Project. ...

Indeed. In reality the last time that I exported a GEDCOM was to set up my Ancestry file. And that's a while ago...

I strongly suspect most users have never done an export; and the majority of those that have did so to put their tree online at Ancestry or other such services.

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

29 May 2021 06:31

I strongly suspect most users have never done an export; and the majority of those that have did so to put their tree online at Ancestry or other such services.

Not forgetting those who export regularly to charting companion
I’ve not tried it recently, but I wonder how it copes with FH7, as it was pretty useless as far as FH6 went ( far too slow)

An interesting topic. My concern is that the new FHv7 Source "methods" and all this "Technical" Genealogy talk may put people off recording their history or perhaps using FH in a more simple way. I can understand that "purists" (and there must be many flavours and interpretations) will want to follow a particular "academic" path, but how necessary is it for most users.

[1] For many years using TMG I simply added my information to the equivalent of the Fact "Note", it served me well, exported via Gedcom and produced the reports I wanted.

[2] Then while moving to FHv5 and AS I had a light bulb (head banging) moment and realised that:
- using a Source (suitably named) for "each piece of information" as the root of everything and putting all the detail in the "Text From Source" and if I didn't want to print some data occasionally put it in the Source "note"
- this made things so much easier, especially for things like Census.
- As far as I can work out, this is a simplified version of FHv7 Generic (aka v6), i.e. using very limited Source fields.
- And that is basically where I still am.

[3] Should I then move onto using more of the many Source fields available, either with the pre FHv7 "Generic" details or the FHv7 templates etc.

I see no need to move from [2] above, I can record any detail I require, share it, report it, print it. I see no need to make it more complicated and it would take me much longer to enter my data. I have so much to key up, I would rather go for more facts than "academic" data that adds nothing to the story.

So, to sum up, I would like to emphasise that FH can also be simple and quick to use.

I would like to emphasise that FH can also be simple and quick to use.

Yes, but that doesn't depend on whether people discuss other more complex options for using it!

In any case, the Essential Templates (for new users who take them 'off the shelf') are simple and quick to use, and not tied to any particular 'academic' path (although Strathclyde University provided input to their definition).

The people who will have problems with them (and any form of templates) are existing users that already know how they like to work, have a lot of information already entered, and find the new possibilities an impedance to carrying on with their preferred way of working.

It would be unfortunate if those people conflated the difficulties in migrating to Templated Sources from Generic Sources (which most people agree is a lot of unjustified work except in special circumstances) with the problems that new users without any 'historical baggage' might encounter, and thus put off new users for exploiting the possibilities of templates.

I’m with you Jim. If I quote Reg GRO B 1921 Q2 Ref Mile End 1c 256 as a source for a birth, do I really need to say whether I found it on GRO website, FreeBmd, Ancestry or Findmypast etc.? I’m not that pedantic, it is enough for someone to order a birth certificate if they so wish.

Like you, I’m too busy adding facts and sources to go to extra mile by adding Author, Repository etc to every source I quote. I just obtain as many sources as I can to validate each fact.

This brings me to a minor bugbear of mine. I have a fact that says Fred Bloggs was born in Mile End in 1921, which is treated as one fact. So I can only provide a source which covers both items. To my mind these are two separate facts a) Where he was born and b) when he was born, so It would be nice if I could provide a separate source for each.

KISS rules, ok

Gowermick wrote: ↑

29 May 2021 15:31

I’m with you Jim. If I quote Reg GRO B 1921 Q2 Ref Mile End 1c 256 as a source for a birth, do I really need to say whether I found it on GRO website, FreeBmd, Ancestry or Findmypast etc.? I’m not that pedantic, it is enough for someone to order a birth certificate if they so wish.

No, if it doesn't matter to you. (Although there are some references you'll find on one website and not another and some websites have a wrong reference.)

I have a fact that says Fred Bloggs was born in Mile End in 1921, which is treated as one fact. So I can only provide a source which covers both items. To my mind these are two separate facts a) Where he was born and b) when he was born, so It would be nice if I could provide a separate source for each.

Not as simple as perhaps you would like, but you can cite as many sources as you like for a fact, and make a note for each citation about which element of the fact it supports. What you suggest (different sources for 'when' and 'where') doesn't comply with gedcom, which FH strives to do.

IMO, many users are not put off Templated Sources per se, they are put off by the perceived complexity of how they have been implemented. I can understand why CP didn’t opt for a simple “me too”, several years after their major competitors, and they’ve made a bold attempt to do something a little different. The merits of that approach have been debated since the early beta testing, and will continue for a while yet ...

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

29 May 2021 15:48

What you suggest (different sources for 'when' and 'where') doesn't comply with gedcom, which FH strives to do.

I wasn’t impying there was a problem with FH, just the shortcomings of GEDCOM. You would have thought someone had considered this when designing the GEDCOM standards in the first place

Gowermick wrote: ↑

29 May 2021 16:08

I wasn’t impying there was a problem with FH, just the shortcomings of GEDCOM. You would have thought someone had considered this when designing the GEDCOM standards in the first place

I am firmly of the opinion that the people designing the Gedcom standard did not consider very much at all outside of their own preconceptions.

Actually, GEDCOM allows Source Citations on more items than many realise, but FH does not support them all very well.
The Place field of each Fact can have its own Source Citation and FH allows them to be added via the All tab.
Expand the Fact then right-click the Place field and Add Source.
They appear in the Citations window, but unfortunately, such Source Citations do not appear in Reports.

If AS did not exist, I think I would take advantage of the new templated sources; customised for my simple method. If I have a regular source type (say headstone) I think I might find it useful to create a "cut down" custom template, if for nothing else than to make it easier to create a standardised Title, as with AS. Although I find it quite quick just to use the plugin "Clone any Record".

Gowermick wrote: ↑

29 May 2021 15:31

This brings me to a minor bugbear of mine. I have a fact that says Fred Bloggs was born in Mile End in 1921, which is treated as one fact. So I can only provide a source which covers both items. To my mind these are two separate facts a) Where he was born and b) when he was born, so It would be nice if I could provide a separate source for each.

Yes I have often pondered this. I take the view that if someone wants to question my " fact" (and peer review should be welcomed), then they can look at all the sources. The "text from source" or elsewhere may then also give explanations. I also have a custom "Surety" fact that can give broader explanations.

tatewise wrote: ↑

29 May 2021 16:24

Actually, GEDCOM allows Source Citations on more items than many realise, but FH does not support them all very well.
The Place field of each Fact can have its own Source Citation and FH allows them to be added via the All tab.
Expand the Fact then right-click the Place field and Add Source.
They appear in the Citations window, but unfortunately, such Source Citations do not appear in Reports.

But not the address or date? Seems like a half-hearted effort if so.