* Family History Multi-Project Person Index

[Mark1834]

I don't think starting FH with command line parameters or an ini file is covered anywhere in either the program help or the KB.

I'll prepare a short KB page summarising the options and linking to the plugin over the next few days (unless someone can point me to existing material that I have missed...).

[ColeValleyGirl]

Thanks, Mark -- I've posted a placeholder here: Parking some material for the KB here until I get around to it (20136) but I'll be delighted it you action it!

[dbnut]

To me, that sounds like a good supporting argument for the usual forum advice of keeping everything in one big Project. I actually run 3 Projects, but they are unrelated to each other and are in 2 different countries.

Sorry to take issue with that. The forum advice is presumably intended for the "general case" and hopefully concedes that there may be the best of arguments for separate projects. As you have, for the reasons stated.

I'm painfully aware perhaps the great majority of FH users have no interest in maintaining more than one or maybe two projects, and sympathetic that topics like this are just unwanted background noise. But so is a huge amount of other discussion here!

Without a poll I wouldn't know for sure, but there seem to be enough users with two or more trees that are connected - and why else would a Split Tree Helper be available and generate plenty of queries/comment?

So admittedly its's a minority interest and to the administrators, and certainly FH developers, a low-priority prospect. But:

• Other useful, advanced features have been introduced that get little attention until something makes you realise its value and you make the effort to learn it.

• Being in the minority doesn't make me a pariah in this diverse community. There are a few souls with similar, if not identical, views and we are thankfully tolerated not driven underground.

• We're going to see a lot more advances in people's expectations, and the features provided, so who's to say multi-project management won't see the light of day one day?

[Mark1834]

Fully aligned on that Paul - we probably take a different view on this particular issue, but this is absolutely the place to discuss it. I’m not adverse to tossing in the odd hand grenade now and again...

[dbnut]

I’m not adverse to tossing in the odd hand grenade now and again...

OK, so you admit to being a bad boy sometimes?
And there was I, thinking I'd been a dogmatic, didactic, right b****d.

[trevorrix]

Going back to basics, I am wondering why you are using multiple projects? One large project is most frequently recommended so that everyone is in one place, therefore only one Records Window.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Trevor, can I suggest you go back and (re)read this topic in its entirety?

If somebody is working on a single family (the majority of user perhaps, we usually recommend a single project.

However, there are many good reasons for having multiple projects -- multiple trees (for different individuals), doing quick and dirty trees for DNA investigations, one-name studies, one-place studies, working on extracting all the data from a very name-rich source...

For example, I have: my main projects; a quick and dirty tree for my half-sister, whose paternity I'm working to establish via DNA, an (infant) one-place study for a tiny village in Wales; a project where I'm extracting all the genealogy data from the Diary of David John; a project consisting of all the Mary Ann Harpers born in England and Wales between and 1860 and 1870 (to be expanded at some point to include Scotland and Ireland); one for a bunch of families in a small area in Nottingham; etc. etc...

Some of the entries in these projects may eventually find their way into my main projects, but the projects themselves will always remain distinct -- it's much easier to work on them that way.

[dbnut]

However, there are many good reasons for having multiple projects...

[trevorrix]

Actually I had read the whole of this thread. I have 44 Family Historian projects mainly because I help lots of unrelated people, have one-name studies, and a one-place study. Yes, quick and dirty trees are often useful too. I only made my comment because it is common for folks not to realise that for projects that contain related people, a single project is often best. Yes, there are lots of us that use multiple projects for good reasons.