Family Historian User Group

I am not sure if this has been raised before but it seems to me that there is something missing when designing a new tab. A good example is the Census UK tab, which triggered my train of thought when reading Census UK Tab - my take (20516). This tab includes all the UK census facts from 1841 to1921, many of which will be unused as they fall outside the life span of the individual.

What I would like to have is the tab to show only those events that fall within the "Life" type of the Normal Time Frame. The Military and Wills tabs don't have the same "surplus" events but could still be constrained by the "Life" and "Post-Death" types, respectively.

There would be a benefit if the birth and/or death of the individual was known, as in the case of the Census tab, it could be a reminder as to which census events were missing, as there would be blanks.

I guess that there is no current way of implementing this, and I have not found anything in the Wish List that appears to relate and that I could vote for. I would welcome the thoughts of others particularly if someone can show me how it can be achieved.

I do it a bit differently.

I define 12 census rows on the tab. They are populated in order by date. If I have only six censuses for a person, then only 6 will be populated. I don't associate each row with a particular census.

My tab looks like this:


My definition for a row looks like this:


Don't know if this might be something you would be interested in.

In most scenarios, only facts that have the correct Normal Time Frame can appear in a Property Box tab.
That is because the tab data references use the numerical instance index [1], [2], [3], etc.
i.e. The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc, fact of a particular type is displayed.
That is the case with the FHUG Download Census Property Box Tab and as illustrated by Bill.
The 'snag' is that gaps in the Census Years are not so obvious.

Your opening gambit refers to the Census UK tab design that uses the [year=yyyy] form of instance index and is only relevant to Census or similar records that occur on a predictable year basis. So they are a small minority of cases.

Regarding the general idea of filtering the displayed facts by Normal Time Frame, that process relies on having definitive Birth and Death dates recorded for the person. Otherwise, the Normal Time Frame is undefined. So what happens then?
Should estimated Birth and Death dates be used? What happens if even they are indeterminate?
However, as illustrated above, this concept is only applicable for tab facts using the [year=yyyy] index.

If instead of only Data References, the tab fact definitions could use Expressions, then the Birth and Death dates could be tested and "N/A" could be displayed for facts outside the Normal Time Frame when that can be determined.

brianlummis wrote: ↑

24 Jul 2022 19:15

I am not sure if this has been raised before but it seems to me that there is something missing when designing a new tab. A good example is the Census UK tab, which triggered my train of thought when reading Census UK Tab - my take (20516). This tab includes all the UK census facts from 1841 to1921, many of which will be unused as they fall outside the life span of the individual.

In effect you are asking for tabs that dynamically reconfigure?

brianlummis wrote: ↑

24 Jul 2022 19:15

What I would like to have is the tab to show only those events that fall within the "Life" type of the Normal Time Frame. The Military and Wills tabs don't have the same "surplus" events but could still be constrained by the "Life" and "Post-Death" types, respectively.

There would be a benefit if the birth and/or death of the individual was known, as in the case of the Census tab, it could be a reminder as to which census events were missing, as there would be blanks.

To try and push an analogy, if the Military tab was to report information like a person's entry on "Army Lists" - which were published at various frequencies you would be defining the tab in a similar way to a census indexing through census years. You cannot define which ones you want until you know the person's dates - and if they are to be distinct fields (the essence of property box tabs) you have a problem.

brianlummis wrote: ↑

24 Jul 2022 19:15

I guess that there is no current way of implementing this, and I have not found anything in the Wish List that appears to relate and that I could vote for. I would welcome the thoughts of others particularly if someone can show me how it can be achieved.

The only way that I can think how this might be achieved is an enhancement which allows you to create a tab which contains that person's details as they would show in a diagram - and you could set a text scheme to control which details you want - sort of "one person diagram-in-a-tab".

Many thanks for the replies. For the time being, I think I may use Bill's approach, although 12 census rows might be a bit of overkill as I don't think I will find any ancestors who live to be 120+ .

Mike has raised the question of the use of Expressions in tab fact definitions and maybe that could be implemented at some time in the future. As far as I can see this expansion of the use of expressions is not in the Wish List - would it need a new Wish List Request or could it be incorporated into an existing related item? This assumes that others might find it beneficial, not just in the context that I was looking for, but maybe in other areas.

David - yes, I suppose I am looking for the tabs to be more dynamic, but I had not considered how this would affect tabs other than the one for Census data.

My conclusion is that it might have been something nice to have, but not a deal breaker.

I suspect Bill has that many rows because in the USA the Census returns can be at 5-year intervals in some States as is illustrated in his screenshot.

See Wish List entry you can Vote for Ref 474 allow fields with qualifiers and the function results on property box tabs and associated posting allow fields with qualifiers on property box tabs (6240).
That allows Expressions to be applied to Property Box custom tabs in the same way as other custom fields in Queries, Records Window Columns, Diagram Text Schemes, Sentence Templates, etc, etc.
I have never understood why Property Box custom tabs are so restricted.

As I think you are realising by your last comment, the particular requirement requested in this thread only applies to custom tabs that use Fact Dat Ref indexes such as [year=yyyy] as those that use basic numerical indexes are automatically limited to their Normal Time Frame.

I see that I had already voted for Ref 474 allow fields with qualifiers an ... box tabs so I must have realised the possibilities some time ago and had forgotten.

brianlummis wrote: ↑

24 Jul 2022 19:15

There would be a benefit . . . as in the case of the Census tab, it could be a reminder as to which census events were missing, as there would be blanks.

Working from Bill’s example, if there was a specific census you thought the individual should be in, but you have been unable to locate the record, you could enter a census fact, enter the date of the census and then leave the place field blank or unknown. Although this would help identify missing census events in the tab, not sure what the impact on various reports would be.

brianlummis wrote: ↑

24 Jul 2022 19:15

There would be a benefit if the birth and/or death of the individual was known, as in the case of the Census tab, it could be a reminder as to which census events were missing, as there would be blanks.

Have you found the MT plug-ins that will prompt you with respect to missing Census facts or missing BMD tags?

Checks selected Individuals for chosen Census Events and produces a web page to search online databases for any missing Census Records. Estimated dates are used, where none are recorded. Womens married names are used where the Census is after the marriage date (or after the birth of the first child).

That does not give you a "per person memo" in the property box, but it is a powerful tool which with a slightly changed workflow may give a solution.

Curtis, that technique is a neat idea but as you suspected there are unwanted side effects.

The Publish > Miscellaneous Reports > Individual Census Report would list that 'blank' Census event but is mitigated by the Place name being Unknown or Missing.

The narrative Sentence Template would result in something like He appeared in the census on 7 April 1871 in Unknown which would appear in the Narrative Reports. That could be rectified by making the Sentence Template conditional on the FACT.CENS.PLAC value, or in those 'blank' Census events setting the specific local Sentence Template to {blank}, but you have to remember to do that each time.

The Lookup Missing Census Facts plugin will usually still list those 'blank' Census events as 'missing'.