Creating a book

mezentia · Post by **mezentia** » 29 May 2013 15:05

I've been playing with creating a Book. I've noticed that if I create individual narrative pages for a selection of people, and include sources, the sources are listed at the end of the report for each individual. This means that where there are large numbers of sources, and accompanying images, the book gets very lengthy with numerous repeats of the details of a source whenever it gets referenced.

Is there a way of consolidating the source references and putting them all together at the end of the book whilst maintaing the correct source reference numbers within each narrative report?

ID:6965

Post by **LornaCraig** » 29 May 2013 16:16

If you create each report separately I think the sources will always be immediately after each report. But if you select several individuals and create one report including all of them, there is an option to put Source Citations at the end of the report after all the individual narratives.
This is in Book Settings (at the bottom of the Edit Book dialog) on the right hand side of the Sources tab. The default is to list citations 'at end of record on same page'. The last option is 'at the end of the Report'.
Does this achieve what you want?

mezentia · Post by **mezentia** » 29 May 2013 18:25

Hi Lorna

I found that setting, and re-created my book selecting all the people I wanted in it in one go, but the sources appear at the end of each individual's report.

I really want the book to include two principal individuals (husband and wife), and all their relatives, but there's not an 'all relatives' report (at least, that I've found). I'd wanted to have one or two pages per relative so that the person getting the book could write in more information.

As I'm only going back one generation from the main couple, I can do a descendents report for each of them. That does reduce the report's size by 140 pages!

Post by **LornaCraig** » 29 May 2013 19:46

That's odd.
If you start from Publish > Narrative Reports > Individual Narrative and produce a report (rather than a book) you can use the Report Options to select Location of Sources 'At the end of the report' and it works. You get the sources after all the individual narratives, reducing the number of duplicated sources.

But if you start from Publish > Books > create a new book, and then select Individual Narrative, the Book Settings option to put sources 'at the end of the report' doesn't seem to work. (It behaves the same way as the second option, 'at end of record on a new page').

I hesitate to say this is a bug, because there might be something we are missing. Pehaps when Jane or Tatewise get back from holiday one of them will be able to enlighten us!

Meanwhile can you achieve what you want by just producing a Report rather than a Report-within-a-book?

Post by **tatewise** » 31 May 2013 19:45

At first sight this does appear to be an oversight in the Book Options.

mezentia · Post by **mezentia** » 31 May 2013 22:38

Is perhaps oversight a euphemism for bug? [wink]

Post by **tatewise** » 01 Jun 2013 23:42

I prefer 'oversight' for the following reasons.

When using Publish > Narrative Reports > Individual Narrative, and selecting multiple Individual Records, the result is a single Report with multiple Records, so the Sources can be grouped together at the end.

When using Publish > Books, and adding Individual Narrative with multiple Individual Records, the result is a separate Report/Chapter for each Individual, so the Sources must belong to each Report/Chapter.
If a Sources section were composed as different Reports for multiple Records were added, then this would result in many Sources sections, and cross-references would be ambiguous.

A Book may contain a variety of different Reports added at different times for various Records, so composing a single Sources section for ALL Reports is quite complex, and would need a separate Sources Chapter/Index that is updated as Reports are added.
It is this capability that has been overlooked.

Post by **LornaCraig** » 02 Jun 2013 11:39

If a Sources section were composed as different Reports for multiple Records were added, then this would result in many Sources sections, and cross-references would be ambiguous.

I understand your explanation Mike. Within a book, the sources need to be either after each Record or at the end of the whole Book, rather than at the end of each (multiple record) Report.

Given this, I think the Book Settings option to place sources At the end of the report should be removed, as it behaves in the same way as the option At end of record on a new page. (In Report Options these two behave in different ways.)

Post by **tatewise** » 02 Jun 2013 12:08

Lorna, I support you suggestion for disabling the Sources tab At the end of the report option.

However, this should not only apply to the Book Settings > Sources tab, but also the Report Options > Sources tab when only one Record was chosen.

In other words, I disagree with your statement: 'In Report Options these two behave in different ways.' because, when only one Record is chosen, there is exactly the same confusion with At the end of the report behaving the same way as At end of record on a new page.
This has been the subject of several Forum postings over the years, especially with Family Group Sheet and Ancestors/Descendants By Generation Reports, where several people appear in the Report, but only one Record was initially chosen.

Post by **LornaCraig** » 02 Jun 2013 14:04

Understood.
Is it best to request the disabling of these options via the Wish List or direct to Calico Pie? ( It is not a request for a new feature, rather a clarification of an old one).

Post by **tatewise** » 02 Jun 2013 14:18

I usually E-mail support at family-historian dot co dot uk as described at http://www.family-historian.co.uk/suppo ... t-overview.

Post by **LornaCraig** » 02 Jun 2013 14:26

I will do that.

mezentia · Post by **mezentia** » 03 Jun 2013 20:30

Dear Lorna, Tatewise

Thank you for the interest you have taken with my problems with creating a book. It seems that using either of the two methods I did to create the book will result in much duplication of source references (and of narrative text). I suppose that someone much cleverer than I ought to be able to devise some cunning query that would solve the problem; sadly, I do not have the time - I have too much research still to do and would like the software to help me as much as possible in that respect and to present the results of my research without needing to resort to convoluted logic and arcane knowledge, and becoming the FH equivalent of a Formula 1 race engineer.

Nevertheless, the book is now done, and the recipient well pleased, if now needing to take out a gym subscription to be able to handle the weight of paper [smile][wink] . The exercise in exporting to an RTF file was constructive as it did allow me to spell-check a substantial number of nates, ooops, notes (digital dyslexia strikes yet again [rolleyes] ) - will we ever get a half-decent spell checker - sigh?

Post by **tatewise** » 03 Jun 2013 22:34

I am interested in your comments.

We now understand the replication of Sources, but I would like to understand the replication of Narrative Text you mention.
Where does this occur?

Unfortunately, Queries, and also probably Plugins, are unsuitable for curing the above type of problem.

mezentia · Post by **mezentia** » 11 Jun 2013 08:46

Dear Tatewise

First, my apologies for not responding earlier, but with recent spell of relatively good weather my attentions have been focussed elsewhere.

It may help if I give a brief outline of the project.

The objects of my research, well call them Mr and Mrs C, lived in a small village on the Warwickshire Staffordshire borders. They were both active in the social, commercial, and political life of the village, and as it happens were also my godparents. The research was to be given to someone who still lives in the village and who has a keen interest in the village history. His father was the village policeman at the time Mr and Mrs C lived there, and his sister is a close friend of my wifes.

Mr and Mrs C had, as far as I can ascertain, no children of their own, although they may have adopted one or more. My research therefore concentrated on Mr and Mrs C, their parents, siblings, nephews and nieces.

I wanted to present the research as a series of individual narrative reports. However, when I created the book in FH the duplication of source references meant that the book became far too long and repetitive, and the report options were gobal in effect, therefore preventing choosing different options for different reports included in the book. I decided in the end to use the descendants report for Mr and Mrs Cs parents as the basis of the book. The duplication of sources was now dramatically reduced, but Im still left with some duplicated narrative and source references in each of the two reports where the two families came together.

I exported the book to an RTF file as at least here I could check the spelling, and subsequently imported the document into Word (other word processors are available [smile] ), where I could amend the presentation, in particular image size and placement, and breaking up great slabs of generated text into more easily assimilated and logically-related sections. I make no apologies for once again re-stating my opinion that one of FHs significant weaknesses is the paucity of facilities for presenting the results of research, and particularly the complete absence of any facilities for text and paragraph formatting, whether that be in notes or within sentence templates.

It is a matter of personal choice when creating a book as to whether to present the source references as footnotes on each page, endnotes at the end of each report, or at the end of the book. In my opinion, and because of the inter-relatedness of the material, the logical thing to do with source references is to collate them and place them at the end of the book. As we have seen, to do otherwise can drown the subject matter in a sea of repetition. From a programming perspective this is not a difficult task: all sources are uniquely identified and self-contained so at the end of report generation there are no references to be resolved requiring a second parse of the generated reports. Simply generating a list of references encountered during the report generation process is all that is required.

This particular project consisted of fewer than 100 people. Now consider the situation where the numbers are orders of magnitude greater, and for just one branch of the family there are (at the last count) over 3,000 individual newspaper references alone! [eek][eek]

Post by **tatewise** » 11 Jun 2013 09:42

Thank you David, I now understand and sympathise with your problem.

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